Sudan sets up committees on ICC

KHARTOUM, Sudan, April 6 (PANA) — Sudan has set up two committees to handle issues
growing out of the recent UN Security Council resolution on the trial of
Sudanese nationals by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged
human rights abuses in the western Darfur region.

Sudanese students demonstrate in Khartoum to protest a UN resolution referring individuals accused of war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.(AFP).

The Council voted 11-0 last Friday approving the war crimes trial at the
ICC, paving the way for the court to prosecute alleged perpetrators of
widespread murder, rape, torture and looting in the Darfur conflict.

Foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told journalists here Wednesday
that President Omar Hassan el-Bashir presides over the higher committee,
while the lower diplomatic committee is an affiliate of the el-Bashir
body.

He said the Bashir-led committee was undertaking a comprehensive study of
the resolution and will submit its recommendations to the Council of
Ministers next Sunday, while the diplomatic committee was working on
political and other implications of the resolution.

Khartoum has vehemently rejected Security Council resolution 1593 as
“unfair” and “narrow-minded,” insisting that the Sudanese judiciary was
capable of trying all individuals suspected of war crimes in war-ravaged
Darfur.

A UN panel prepared a list of some 50 suspects it submitted to UN
secretary-general Kofi Annan who subsequently passed it on to the ICC in
what amounts to a kick-off of the process leading to trial of suspects in
the Darfur saga.

President el-Bashir has vowed not to hand over any of his compatriot for
trial abroad, the first of its kind for Sudanese nationals.