Sudan says Mbeki panel to recommend hybrid courts for Darfur crimes

September 1, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — A commission established by the African Union (AU) this year to look into ways to resolve the Darfur conflict in Western Sudan will recommend homegrown justice mechanisms to look into war crime issues, Sudanese officials said.

The independent Al-Sahafa newspaper quoted unidentified Sudanese officials from Cairo, where presidential assistant Nafi Ali Nafi is currently visiting, as saying that the panel stressed to them that Darfur conflict should be resolved within the comprehensive approach to the crisis in Sudan.

The panel headed by the former South African president Thabo Mbeki suggested a conference which would include the government and opposition as well as rebel groups, NGO’s and civilian administration in Darfur, the officials said.

The eight-member panel was established by the AU last February in response to the imminent issuance of arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir which came a month later.

The mandate of the panel has not been made public but it includes conducting an “in-depth assessment of the situation in Darfur” as it relates “to human rights and international humanitarian law violations and abuses.”

It will also assess the measures taken by Khartoum authorities to address the violations in Darfur in terms of justice and the impact of the ICC on the North-South peace process concluded in 2005.

The AU has slammed the ICC arrest warrant for Bashir and in July the pan-African body instructed its members not to cooperate with the Hague based court.

Multiple sources told Sudan Tribune at the time that Mbeki has lobbied intensely to prevent the Sirte summit from endorsing the Libyan backed proposal arguing that it will undermine the work of his commission.

The Sudanese officials told Al-Sahafa newspaper that the Mbeki panel wants a “truth and reconciliation commission” similar to that of South Africa.

The panel would also recommend special or hybrid courts and a prosecutor in Sudan to bring Darfur war crimes suspects and that all people would be equally treated before the judiciary, the officials added.

Sudan in the past has rejected any participation of non-Sudanese judges in the Darfur prosecutions.

Darfur rebel groups today dismissed the work of the panel accusing it of seeking to circumvent the ICC investigations in the war ravaged region.

“We reject in its entirety any direction to establish courts or venues for justice in the manner described in this report. This is nothing short than an attempt to find an exit for Bashir. Only the ICC can handle the Darfur prosecutions,” Ahmed Hussein, the spokesperson for Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) told Sudan Tribune by phone from Libya.

“We from day one had serious doubts about the impartiality of the Mbeki panel which is why we refused to meet with it. There were leakages on the part of Khartoum saying they will accept anything that the committee will come up with which means they are confident that it will come up with recommendations in their favor,” Hussein added.

The JEM official stressed that Mbeki’s panel “must work for the sake of the victims not the perpetrators”.

Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur, the head of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), said that the panel never requested a meeting with him.

“This is a political and legal issue. As a major party to the conflict, they at a minimum should have sought to hear our [SLM] views on the conflict,” Al-Nur told Sudan Tribune by phone from Paris.

“What do you expect from a panel like this? They [Mbeki panel] met with the IDP’s who told them that they want security and prosecuting criminals at the ICC. However, they came afterwards to say something totally different” Al-Nur said.

The SLM chief slammed the AU saying that the latter has not “dared” to condemn the Darfur atrocities “all these years.”

“The AU stripped the Darfuris from their humanity. They are supporting the government of Sudan. In any of their summit did anyone mention the genocide in Darfur? Therefore I do not expect anything positive from the panel. They came to save Bashir and others from the ICC under the cover of Africa,” Al-Nur said.

“If the report is true it just proves that the findings of the panel were prefixed with Khartoum,” he added.

The Mbeki panel is scheduled to submit its report to the AU by the end of September. Its deadline was extended from the original deadline of July.

(ST)