State Designates Hamza Terrorist

The U.S. State Department has designated Al-Ra’Ouf Abu Zaid Mohamed Hamza as a terrorist under Executive Order 13224. As a result, all property subject to U.S. jurisdiction in which Hamza has any interest is blocked and any assets he may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen.

State Designates Hamza Terrorist

Hamza was one of four Sudanese men involved in the 2008 murder of John Michael Granville, a U.S. diplomat serving with the U.S. Agency for International Development and a locally employed U.S. Embassy staff member, Adbelrahman Abbas Rahama.

Granville and Abbas were leaving a New Year’s Eve party in Khartoum, Sudan, on January 1, 2008, when they were attacked. Four men including, Hamza, were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in a Sudanese criminal court in 2009. In 2010, the four men escaped from a maximum security prison, killing a Sudanese police officer and wounding another in the process.

Hamza was quickly recaptured and is currently in prison in Khartoum. Another of the fugitives was killed in 2011. But the two fugitives – Abdelbasit Alhaj Alhasan Haj Hamad and Mohamed Makawi Ibrahim Mohamed – remain at large. They were both designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists in January 2013.

The U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice program has authorized rewards of up to $5 million for each for information leading to the capture of the two fugitives. Since the inception of the Rewards for Justice program in 1984, the United States has paid more than $100 million to over 70 people who provided credible information that put terrorists behind bars or prevented acts of international terrorism worldwide.

By designating Hamza a terrorist, the State Department has made clear to the public, and in particular, to the Granville and Abbas families that it is committed to seeing justice done in this case.