ICC prosecutor: There are grounds to believe Sudan’s warring sides are committing crimes in Darfur
UNITED NATIONS — The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor told the UN Security Council on Monday that his “clear finding” is that there are reasons to believe that both Sudan’s armed forces and paramilitary rivals are committing crimes in the western region of Darfur during the current conflict in the country.
Karim Khan, who recently visited neighboring Chad, where tens of thousands of people have fled Darfur, warned that those he met in refugee camps fear Darfur will become “the forgotten atrocity.” He urged the Sudanese government to provide its researchers with multiple-entry visas and respond to 35 requests for assistance.
Sudan plunged into chaos last April when long-simmering tensions between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, erupted into street fighting in the capital Khartoum and other areas.
Darfur, wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003, has been an epicenter of the current conflict, an arena of ethnic violence where paramilitary forces and allied Arab militias have attacked African ethnic groups.
According to the United Nations, the fighting has displaced more than 7 million people and killed 12,000. Local doctors’ groups and activists say the actual death toll is much higher.
In 2005, the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, and Prosecutor Khan has said the court still has a mandate under that resolution to investigate crimes in the vast region.
He told the council: “Based on the work of my office, it is my clear finding, my clear assessment, that there are reasons to believe that Rome Statute crimes are currently being committed in Darfur by both the Sudanese armed forces as the Rapid Support Forces. and affiliated groups.”
The Rome Statute established the ICC in 2002 to investigate the world’s worst atrocities – war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – and the crime of aggression.
In Darfur, Khan warned, the world is confronted with “an ugly and inescapable truth” that goes back to the original conflict.
“The failure of the international community to execute the arrest warrants issued by independent judges of the ICC has reinforced the climate of impunity and the outbreak of violence that began in April and continues today,” he said.
“Without justice for past atrocities, the inescapable truth is that we are condemning the current generation, and if we do nothing now, we are condemning future generations to suffer the same fate,” Khan said.
The 2003 conflict in Darfur began when rebels from the area’s ethnic sub-Saharan African community launched an uprising, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination and neglect.
The government, under then-President Omar al-Bashir, responded with aerial bombardments and unleashed local nomadic Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million people were driven from their homes.
Khan told the council on Monday that some Darfuris he spoke to in Chad said what is happening today is worse than in 2003.
Last April, the first ICC trial into the atrocities committed by Sudanese government-backed forces in Darfur began in The Hague. The defendant, Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, pleaded not guilty to all 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Khan urged the parties in the ongoing conflict to respond “meaningfully” to requests for assistance from Abd-Al-Rahman’s defense team.
The prosecutor said he was pleased to report to the council that “progress” has been made in the ICC cases against former President al-Bashir and two senior government security officials during the 2003 Darfur conflict, Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein and Ahmed Haroun.
“We have received evidence that further strengthens these specific cases,” Khan said. The three have never been handed over to the ICC, and their whereabouts during the current conflict in Sudan remain unknown.