Sudan to try three people on Darfur crimes

March 6, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan said Tuesday it will try three Sudanese on charges of crimes relating to the Darfur crisis in what appeared to be an attempt to pre-empt and the International Criminal Court’s investigation into accusations of crimes against humanity in the war-torn region.

Six Sudanese men stand in the dock in a court in Nyala September 30, 2004, accused of belonging to the Arab militia. (Reuters) .

Details about the charges or alleged crimes were not available, but Sudan’s official news agency, SUNA, reported that the trial would start Wednesday in the western Darfur capital of El-Geneina.

Among the three was Ali Mohamed Ali Abdelrahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, a member of Sudan’s security forces who is one of two suspects sought by the ICC over accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Along with Kushayb, Judge Ahmed Abu Zaid also will try Capt. Hamdi Sharaful Din, also of the security forces, and Abdelrahaman Dawood Humaida, SUNA said. The news agency did not provide information about Humaida but said the three were in custody. It did not provide more details.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has said his country will never hand over its citizens to an international court and has defended his country’s courts, saying they are honest and qualified to try any Sudanese.

Last week, the ICC accused Kushayb and Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, the former junior interior minister responsible for the western region of Darfur, of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for alleged attacks against civilians in Darfur.

Even though the ICC cannot prosecute individuals already on trial for the same crime in their own country, chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that Khartoum’s investigation of Kushayb does not “encompass the same conduct that is the subject of the case now before the Court (ICC).”

The ICC case alleges Haroun and Kushayb worked “together to commit alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes,” Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press. However, he indicated Sudan and the two Sudanese suspects may challenge ICC’s jurisdiction but that this would be for the judges to rule on.

ICC documents say that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that Haroun and Kushayb “bear criminal responsibility” for the offenses, including murder, rape, torture and persecution in Darfur.

The Sudanese government had told the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, that Kushayb was arrested last November and was in custody pending an investigation into five attacks in which hundreds of people were killed. It was not immediately known if the trial set to start Wednesday in Darfur was related to that investigation.

Kushayb has denied leading a group of janjaweed militias in attacks on civilians in Darfur. He told the pro-Arab, pro-Islamist Al Intibaha newspaper that he “did not kill any innocent people” and “did not cause the displacement of any people.”

Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha told the Sudan Media Center on Tuesday that the accusations against Haroun were “unfounded and seek to undermine security and stability in the country.”

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur since fighting erupted in February 2003 when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Khartoum government. Arab militias known as the janjaweed are blamed for many of the crimes.

ICC prosecutors singled out atrocities in four separate towns and villages, saying janjaweed fighters targeted civilians suspected of supporting rebels.

Khartoum also has rejected pressure from the United Nations to replace ill-equipped and understaffed African Union peacekeepers in Darfur with a larger U.N. force. Al-Bashir has claimed that U.N. peacekeepers would compromise Sudan’s sovereignty and try to re-colonize the country.
The announcement that the three will be tried in Sudan comes just days before senior U.S. diplomats are expect to meet al-Bashir in Khartoum. It also comes as the U.S. State Department on Tuesday labeled the ongoing genocide in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region was the world’s worst human rights abuse last year.

“The Sudanese government and government-backed janjaweed militia bear responsibility for the genocide in Darfur,” the State Department said, adding that they, along with indigenous rebels, had and continued to commit atrocities as the four-year-old war rages unabated.

Washington first declared the situation in Darfur a “genocide” in 2004 when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word in congressional testimony but other countries and the United Nations have refrained from using the word and some U.S. officials have recently toned down such language.

(AP)