Sudan to investigate allegations of Darfur rapes

April 7, 2007 (NAIROBI) — Sudan will investigate a U.N. report into allegations government soldiers raped women in Darfur, the justice minister said Saturday, but criticized the report for failing to present details.

The U.N. report said uniformed men had perpetrated at least 15 cases of rape or sexual assault in December in Jebel Marra, a region in the east of Darfur. Rape, it said, appears to have been “used as a weapon of war to cause humiliation and instill fear in the local population.”

Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi said the testimony detailed in the report, released Friday by the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, would be investigated.

“We are ready to investigate whatever complaints are made against the government,” he said of the testimony collected by 30 U.N. human rights investigators working in Darfur.

The minister said, however, that many of the allegations were unsubstantiated and missing details and facts.

“We always seem to get sweeping generalizations, without naming the injured, without naming the offenders … or supplying us with sufficient facts,” he told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where he was on a stop over on his way back to Sudan from South Africa.

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been the scene of a bloody four-year conflict between government-backed militias and rebel forces. More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2.5 million driven from their homes, according to U.N. estimates.

(AP)