KHARTOUM, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Four Sudanese men accused of murdering a U.S. aid worker in Khartoum told a court on Thursday they confessed to the crime under torture, their lawyer said.

A fifth man facing the same charge admitted supplying the four others with weapons, but denied knowing anything about their plans, said Sadig Kaduda, the head of their defence team.

The five are accused of murdering John Granville, a 33-year-old officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39, in the early hours of Jan. 1.

Granville and Rahama were shot dead as they drove home from New Year's Eve celebrations, a crime that sent shockwaves through Khartoum's expatriate community.

Khartoum police's chief investigator in the case, Abdelrahim Ahmed Abdelrahim, read out confessions he said had been made by the five defendants, Kaduda told Reuters.

Abdelrahim said three of the defendants had originally planned to launch a "jihad" against foreigners working in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region.

These were the statements that the investigator read out, saying they were confessions," Kaduda said. "But they were all retracted in court. The men said the statements had been extracted under torture."

The judge adjourned the case until September 21.

(Reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz and Andrew Heavens; editing by Robert Hart)

AlertNet news is provided by