Court jails 10 Sudanese Arab militiamen for armed attacks, robbery
KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 19, 2004 (AP) — A special court set up by the Sudanese government to end atrocities in the western Darfur region sentenced 10 Arab militiamen Monday to six years in jail and ordered each have a hand and a foot amputated for attacking and robbing villagers.
The Sudanese government, under international pressure to end atrocities by militias known as the Janjaweed against black Africans, apparently is using the courts to show it is fulfilling its pledge to bring law and order to the area. The government has denied backs the militias with helicopter gunships and vehicles in a campaign that has been equated with ethnic cleansing.
On Friday, Sudanese Foreign Minister Osman Ismail said anyone who violated human rights in Darfur “will face justice.” However, in his remarks after a meeting with the U.N. envoy to Sudan , Jan Pronk, the minister didn’t mention special courts hearing such cases in Darfur.
The sentences were the first handed down by the special court, though the official Sudan Media Center that announced the decision, said another case was being heard later Monday.
The Media Center, a government agency that distributes official statements, said the session convicting and sentencing the 10 militiamen was Sunday in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state.
It didn’t identify the men and it wasn’t clear when proceedings against them had begun, but the Media Center said they were convicted of armed attacks, robbery and illegal possession of arms.
It wasn’t clear when the sentences would be carried out.
Under Islamic laws followed by the Sudanese government, a recurrent thief is punished by cutting off the left hand and the right foot. If the thief steals again, the remaining right hand and the left foot are amputated.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million of Darfur’s 6.7 million people have fled their homes in the face of attacks by the Janjaweed, or “men on horseback” in the local dialect. Darfur’s troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and their African farming neighbors over dwindling water and agricultural land.
Those tensions exploded into violence in February 2003, when two African rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in the land dispute.