Sudan says will suspend cooperation with ICC
March 18, 2007 (CAIRO) — Sudan has decided to suspend all cooperation with the International Criminal Court in response to its accusations that Sudanese officials were involved in war crimes in Darfur, the justice minister and a pro-government newspaper said Sunday.
“We had extended our cooperation with the ICC for some time, but now the situation is completely different,” Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told The Associated Press on the telephone from Geneva, where he was attending a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting.
“It’s not even a question of cooperation anymore, it’s a question that they (the ICC) want to try Sudanese citizens, which is absolutely nonsensical,” the justice minister said.
Last month, The Hague-based court accused a Sudanese minister of state and a militia leader of orchestrating massacres, mass rapes and the forcible transfer of thousands of civilians from their homes in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan.
The court’s top prosecutor said Ahmed Muhammed Harun — formerly a junior interior minister responsible for Darfur and now minister of state for humanitarian affairs — and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman — also known as Ali Kushayb, a suspected leader of the pro-government janjaweed militia — were suspected of a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The janjaweed are blamed for widescale atrocities against ethnic African civilians in Darfur amid a government campaign to put down rebels in the large territory of western Sudan. More than 200,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in four years of fighting.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir chaired a meeting of Cabinet ministers and high-ranking judicial officials that decided to cancel cooperation with the court, the Al-Ray Al-Aam daily newspaper, deemed close to government circles, reported Sunday.
The presidential meeting turned down a suggestion from some government officials to send a delegation to The Hague to contest the case with the ICC, the paper said.
Al-Mardi reiterated his government’s stance that the Hague-based ICC has no jurisdiction over Sudanese citizens because Sudan hasn’t ratified the convention creating the international court.
Sudan says it is handling its own investigations into Darfur crimes. The justice minister said both suspects named by the ICC had been fully investigated by Sudanese courts.
“Not a shred of evidence was found against Harun,” al-Mardi said. He did not specify the verdict against Kushayb, who is widely reported to control one of the fiercest fringes of the janjaweed in the western Darfur. The ICC prosecution has described Sudan’s efforts to investigate crimes in Darfur as barely more than “lip service.”
(AP)