ICC to present Darfur crimes evidence next week
Feb 22, 2007 (THE HAGUE) — The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will disclose names next week of suspects believed to be involved in atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region and present judges with evidence linking them to war crimes, his office announced Thursday.
“Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will submit evidence, in connection with named individuals, of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur,” said a prosecution statement.
Once the evidence has been filed with judges on Tuesday, they will study it and have the power to issue arrest warrants if they believe any of the individuals named has a case to answer. It is unclear how long that process might take.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in Darfur since February 2003, when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Sudanese government.
Khartoum is accused of responding by unleashing the tribal militia known as janjaweed. Khartoum denies the charge, but members of the janjaweed have told the media that they were armed by government forces.
The White House has labeled the attacks genocide.
Since the U.N. Security Council asked Moreno-Ocampo to investigate possible war crimes in Darfur, his investigators have interviewed scores of suspects around the world and at least two Sudanese officials in Khartoum, but have not been able to visit Darfur itself to search crime scenes for evidence and interview victims.
If the judges decide to issue arrest warrants, it remains to be seen if they can be executed.
Sudanese authorities have not signed the international treaty that created the court, and claim it has no jurisdiction in the country.
“We as a government are willing and able to try all perpetrators of offenses in Darfur, and for this reason the ICC has absolutely no right to assume any jurisdiction,” Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told The Associated Press in an interview last month.
The court has no police force and so far the only suspect in its Hague detention unit — a Congolese militia leader accused of recruiting child soldiers — was already in custody in Kinshasa when the court sought his arrest.
In another case, Interpol last year issued so-called red notices for the leaders of a Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, who are wanted by the ICC, but they remain at large.
An Interpol red notice alerts countries that a valid arrest warrant has been put out for a suspect. Although the red notice is not itself an arrest warrant, most governments will act on it to detain a suspect if they can.
A 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force has been trying to stop the ongoing violence, but the force is underfunded and ill-equipped.
(AP)