African Union to create legal team for Darfur investigation
August 5, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – The African Union (AU) said it is drawing up a list of top lawyers to investigate Darfur war crimes in response to the move by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.
This week Ping has warned that a request from the ICC prosecutor to arrest Al-Bashir had thrown “more oil in the fire”.
The ICC’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked pre-trial judges in mid-July to issue arrest warrants for Al-Bashir.
Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. Judges are expected to take months to study the evidence before deciding whether to order Al-Bashir’s arrest.
Ping said a team of “respected Africans” would come to Sudan “as soon as possible… to examine the situation, investigate themselves”.
He said the lawyers would conduct a similar investigation to that of The Hague-based court in order to show “what the ICC did or did not do”.
“We are going ourselves to investigate and work closely with the Sudanese government” he said. “Some of them may come from Africa; some of them may come from universities in England, in America, everywhere”.
It is not clear what the mandate of the legal team would be and whether it would conduct a full blown investigation in Darfur. No Sudanese official has commented on Ping’s statements.
The UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted resolution 1564 in 2004 under Chapter VII forming a Darfur Commission of Inquiry.
The commission was “to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law in Darfur by all parties, to determine also whether or not acts of genocide have occurred, and to identify the perpetrators of such violations with a view to ensuring that those responsible are held accountable”.
The commission concluded that “that the Government of the Sudan and the Janjaweed are responsible for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law”.
“Government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur” the report said.
It also recommended that the UNSC refer the Darfur case to the ICC which occurred under resolution 1593 in March 2005.
Sudan has said that its local courts will be the ones responsible for investigating Darfur war crimes and refused any foreign monitoring for national proceedings.
Today the Sudanese justice minister Abdel-Basit Sabdarat announced today the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into rights abuses committed in war ravaged region of Darfur since 2003.
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Awuoldit mach aduot mach
African Union to create legal team for Darfur investigation
I think it’s up to ICC to prosecute Sudanese president in my views without any involvement for African lawyers’ or whatever their names are. The conflict in Darfur doesn’t start yesterday for those lawyers to give excuses about it. They knew that Mr. Basher is committing human right violation for long time but fail to acts. Please late the ICC do it works without interfered.
Kur
African Union to create legal team for Darfur investigation
Why this panic? whom do the African Union investigations want to help? Five years of horrible killings and nobody said anything. Now that Bashir is indicted so everybody want to reverse the justice for Darfur. Those African lawyers should not waste their time going to Darfur to walk over the bones of those who were raped and killed while those who are now ordering the investigations were standing by.This is a false lips service because the AU remains a toothless entity which cannot help even the common African man it claims to represent.
Kur
AJAK
African Union to create legal team for Darfur investigation
What the AU is intending to do is all rubbish,Where was the AU commissioner for all these five years of Killing in Darfur.if the AU leaders try to pretend that they did not know what has been going on in Darfur then they are not sincere to themselves. It will be an embarrassment to AU if they start investigating the crimes that are already investigated by the ICC prosecutor. No collective responsibility of crimes, the AU should let Beshir account for his action in case the ICC judges Issue an arrest Warrant.
K Bambo
African Union to create legal team for Darfur investigation
It is shame, the organisation that is suppose to protect people does the opposite. AU’s dessision seems to be against the victims. Shame on African Union, Shame on the dictators in the AU who are trying to protect other dictators who are handing on the power and killing children, woman.
K Bambo, Dubai