ICC prosecutor urges Sudan war crime arrests
Jun 7, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — The chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal urged the Security Council Thursday to pressure Sudan to arrest a Cabinet minister and Arab militia leader charged with atrocities in Darfur villages.
The Security Council’s members head next week to Africa, where they will meet on June 17 with Sudanese government leaders who have rejected the International Criminal Court’s demand to arrest the two men.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, also called on regional organizations to pressure Sudan.
“The Security Council and regional organizations must take the lead in calling on the Sudan to arrest the two individuals and surrender them to the court,” Ocampo told the council.
The court issued warrants in early May charging Ahmed Harun, Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Kushayb, known as a “colonel of colonels” among the janjaweed, with a total of 51 war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2003 and 2004.
Harun is accused of organizing a system to recruit, fund and arm janjaweed militia to support the Sudanese Armed Forces, Ocampo said. The prosecution alleges that he incited the militiamen “to attack and commit massive crimes against the civilian population,” he said.
Kushayb is accused of “personally delivering arms and leading attacks against villages,” Ocampo said.
After the briefing, Ocampo told reporters he was “very pleased” that council members would raise the arrest issue next week. He also said prosecutors have kept the African Union and Arab League informed and they have cooperated “in different ways,” though he did not elaborate.
The four-year-old conflict between ethnic African rebels and the pro-government janjaweed in the vast western Darfur region has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.
“Presiding over this dire situation is the same individual sought by the court, Ahmad Harun, now minister of state for humanitarian affairs,” Ocampo said.
“These people who were his victims are in his hands. This is unacceptable. We have to stop this,” he told reporters.
Belgium’s U.N. Ambassador Johan Verbeke, the council president, said some council members suggested during closed-door consultations after Ocampo’s briefing that the arrest of the two men be raised during next week’s Africa trip.
“We call on the Sudanese government to cooperate with the prosecutor,” said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who will be going to Sudan with the council.
France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said “sustainable peace in Darfur is unimaginable without justice for the victims.”
“The council must clearly support the request for Sudan to arrest and to hand over the two people who have been charged to the court,” he said in a statement. “The council will have to tell the authorities in Khartoum that they must cooperate.”
Ocampo refused to say whether his investigation into events in Darfur in 2003-2004, when the number of killings and rapes peaked, was finished. He stressed instead that prosecutors have witnesses prepared to testify about the alleged involvement of Harun and Kushayb in some of the worst incidents.
Ocampo said his office is gathering information about current crimes committed by all parties to the Darfur conflict and is monitoring the spillover of violence into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.
(AP)