Hague court gets papers on suspected Darfur war crimes

By Emma Thomasson

THE HAGUE, April 5 (Reuters) – The International Criminal Court took charge of box loads of documents about alleged war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region from a special United Nations commission on Tuesday.

Inaugural ceremony of International Criminal Court in The Hague, March 11, 2003. (Reuters).

The U.N. Security Council voted last week to refer alleged crimes against humanity committed during more than two years of rebellion in Darfur to the ICC.

Serge Brammertz, deputy ICC prosecutor for investigations, took charge of 9 large boxes of documents at the Hague court — the world’s first permanent global criminal court established in 2002 to try cases of genocide and major human rights violations.

“We will now proceed with the analysis of the documents and prepare a work,” Brammertz told journalists. “We will put together a team of analysts and investigators.”

The U.N. says Sudan has done little to disarm the Arab militia accused of a widespread rape, killing and burning of non-Arab villages in Darfur during a two-year rebel uprising.

More than two million people have fled their homes and tens of thousands have been killed in the Darfur fighting.

Brammertz said it was too early to say when the ICC might issue indictments or arrest warrants over Darfur and added he hoped the Sudanese government would help with the investigation.

“We hope there will be constructive cooperation,” he said. “We will cooperate with international institutions and governments to collect as much information as we can.”

Chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will meet U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan later on Tuesday in New York to take charge of a sealed list of 51 people, who the U.N. commission has accused of involvement in crimes in Darfur.

The list includes senior Sudanese government and army officials, militia leaders and rebel and foreign army commanders but the ICC will not reveal the content of the list and will only decide later who it wants to indict.

Sudan has said it would refuse to hand over its citizens to face trial abroad, saying it would prosecute alleged criminals itself. It arrested 15 officials from the military and security forces last week. Sudanese rebels have said they are prepared to surrender to the ICC if they are indicted.

The ICC is supported by almost 100 countries but fiercely opposed by the United States, which fears politically motivated prosecutions of its soldiers and citizens.

Washington abstained from the Security Council vote on Darfur last week after winning guarantees that its citizens in Sudan would be exempt from prosecutions by the ICC.

The Darfur case is the first the Security Council has referred to the ICC, which is already investigating alleged crimes in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Human rights groups have called the decision to refer Darfur to the ICC a major victory for supporters of the court and urged the U.S. to reconsider its opposition to the ICC and hand over its own evidence gathered on the situation in Darfur, which Washington has described as genocide.