US welcomes ICC’s indictments on Darfur

Feb 27, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The United States endorsed the International Criminal Court’s indictment of two prominent Sudanese on charges they committed war crimes in Darfur and urged President Omar al-Bashir’s government to cooperate.

The Sudanese already have rejected the indictments against a close al-Bashir colleague and an alleged leader of a government-supported militia.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States fully supports “bringing to justice those responsible for crimes and atrocities that have occurred in Darfur.”

He said: “It is now incumbent upon the government of Sudan, we believe, to cooperate with the ICC.”

One of the suspects named Tuesday at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, is Ahmed Mohamed Haroun, Sudan’s minister of state for humanitarian affairs, a member of al-Bashir’s inner circle. The other is Ali Mohamed Ali Abdelrahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, who the court said is a high-ranking leader of the janjaweed militia.

In Khartoum, Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi rejected the charges out of hand and said the men will not be surrendered to the International Criminal Court.

The United States generally opposes the court and refuses to transfer military equipment to countries that do not exempt U.S. soldiers from prosecution in the court.

McCormack said Tuesday that U.S. views toward the ICC are well known. “In the case of Sudan …, we didn’t oppose a referral to the ICC because we support accountability for the crimes that have been committed in Darfur,” he said.

The violence began four years ago in the arid western Sudan region when black African Sudanese rebels rose against the ethnic Arab central government demanding autonomy. With much of the fighting done by government-supported rebels, more than 200,000 have been killed and 2.5 million displaced.

(AP)