Turabi calls on Sudan’s Bashir to face ICC charges

January 12, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s opposition Islamist leader leader, Hassan Al-Turabi called on the Sudanese President to assume his political responsibility on Darfur crimes and defend himself at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Politically we think he is culpable” Turabi said. He also suggested that the government can hand him over or on his own initiative to go the ICC. “He should assume responsibility for whatever is happening in Darfur, displacement, burning all the villages, rapes, I mean systematic rapes, continuously, I mean on a wide scale and the killing,” Turabi said.

“He should go there and defend himself… We are against the system of justice in Sudan… but politically he’s guilty. No doubt about it” he stressed.

On July 14, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno- Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder and accused Al-Bashir of masterminding a campaign to get rid of the African tribes in Darfur; Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.

The ICC judges started reviewing the charges since last October but it is unlikely they take a decision on the request before two or three months.

However Turabi said he did not think that the Sudanese government deliberately meant to launch genocide in Darfur.

Speaking to reporters in Khartoum, he also underlined the importance of the killing and causalities of the repression in Darfur. “Six million of the Sudanese are now paralysed, no agriculture, no animal farming or rearing. He is responsible and we condemn him.”

Turabi had been the mentor of the current President since 1989 but he was ousted from his post as parliament speaker and the National Congress Part in 1999. Since he created his own party (Popular Congress Party).

He is the first leader of a political party to voice his support to the ICC in the country. The Deputy chairman of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Ali Mahmoud Hassaneinn also supported the ICC action against the Sudanese president but Mohamed Osman Al-Mirghani the chairman supported the leader.

Nonetheless Turabi said that the lost of constitutional authority in the country could lead the country to be worse than Somalia. “We are not one people like the Somalis or one religion or one language. We are a diversity of peoples.”

He further speculates that ICC arrest warrant could encourage the rebels to attack Khartoum and seek to destabilize the political stability in the country.

“They may do something and then this will carry the others and then the south, they are mostly for the court because they get all the assistance from outside… They cannot go and stand up against international institutions.”

“That would disturb the Sudan very much. If we lose authority, or disturbance of the existence of any authority, dictatorship or at all, then Sudan will be in a worse mess than Somalia, unfortunately,” he warned.

The U.N. describes the situation in Darfur as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and says more than 300,000 people have been killed and 2.3 million displaced in the six year conflict.

(ST)