US withholding info on Darfur crimes to protect IDP camps: report

By Wasil Ali

November 25, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The US administration has compiled extensive evidence against senior Sudanese officials implicating them in the Darfur war crimes according to a report released by ‘ENOUGH’ group last week.

The report named ‘A Strategy for Success in Sirte’ was prepared by Colin Thomas-Jensen, Africa Advocacy and Research Manager at the International Crisis Group and John Prendergast, director of African affairs for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

“U.S. intelligence services are closely monitoring communications within Sudan, listening to conversations between Sudanese officials and others that could implicate them in crimes committed in Darfur” according to the report.

An unidentified senior US official was quoted in the report telling ‘ENOUGH’ earlier this year that “the Bush administration has files that outline the involvement of many senior regime officials in pursuing a policy of scorched earth ethnic cleansing in Darfur”.

ENOUGH, a joint project of Crisis Group and the Center for American Progress, with the aim of helping to bring an end to the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Darfur, northern Uganda and eastern Congo, and to prevent future mass atrocities.

The UN Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2005. The US bent down to pressure and abstained from voting after fierce resistance.

The judges of the ICC issued their first arrest warrants for suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region in early May.

The warrants were issued for Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs, and militia commander Ali Kushayb. Sudan has so far rejected handing over the two suspects.

The US official said that the Bush Administration has decided not to hand over the evidence to the ICC saying that “the prospect of indictment and arrest could force the regime into “survival mode” and cause it to attack the camps for displaced persons in Darfur”.

But Prendergast and Thomas-Jensen disagreed saying that attacks by Khartoum on Darfur refugee camps have continued.

The report called on the US administration and other governments to assist the ICC in its investigations.

Last month Salah Gosh, the head of Sudan’s National Security and Intelligence Service, told the Al-Ahdath daily that the cooperation with the US “helped avert devastating measures [by US administration] against Sudan”.

Last May the US president George Bush ordered stiffened sanctions on Sudan that will bar 31 companies controlled by the government from doing business in the U.S. financial system as well as sanctions on four Sudanese individuals, including two senior Sudanese officials and a rebel leader suspected of involvement in the Darfur violence.

International experts estimate some 200,000 have died and over 2 million have been driven from their homes during 4-1/2 years of fighting in Darfur. Sudan puts the death toll from the conflict at just 9,000.

(ST)