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Amadeus85
07-11-2008, 01:44 PM
ICC to Charge Sudan's Bashir Over Darfur

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The ICC chief prosecutor will seek an arrest warrant for al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur. (Reuters)
CAIRO — The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

"It's going ahead on Monday," one source told the Guardian on Friday, July 11.

The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said he will submit evidence "on crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years".

He said he would publicly "summarize the evidence, the crimes and name individual(s) charged".

"I will present my case and my evidence to the [ICC] judges, and they will take two to three months to decide," Moreno-Ocampo said in an interview with the Washington Post on Wednesday.

"We will request a warrant of arrest, and the judges have to evaluate the evidence."

The ICC does not issue formal indictments, but simply presents its charges to a pretrial chamber and asks it to issue an arrest warrant for a suspect.

Last month, Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council that he would go after top Sudanese officials, saying the "entire state apparatus" was involved in systematic attacks on civilians.

The Hague-based ICC issued in April of last year arrest warrants for Sudanese State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Harun and militia leader Kosheib on charges of committing crimes in Darfur.

Sudan, which is not a party to the ICC statute, has refused to hand over the two men.

Playing With Fire

Sudan warned that filing charges against Bashir or other senior officials would undermine peace efforts in Darfur.

"Ocampo is playing with fire," Sudan's UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said.

"If the United Nations is serious about its engagement with Sudan, it should tell this man to suspend what he is doing with this so-called indictment. There will be grave repercussions."

The lobby group, the European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, also warned of grave consequences.

"The perception in Khartoum is that the ICC is on dodgy ground legally," said the council's head David Hoile.

"The official policy is to ignore it. I've heard the argument in Khartoum that it's white man's justice. It's focused entirely on Africa, and has done nothing on Iraq or Afghanistan.

"If the ICC go after Bashir, it will have very negative effects.

"It tells the rebel movements in Darfur to wait it out and the government will be changed by the ICC. The whole thing is not going to turn out well."

The Darfur conflict broke out when rebels took up arms against the Khartoum regime accusing it of discrimination.

The UN estimates some 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease in Darfur, a region the size of France. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.

Up to 2 million have been forced out of their homes in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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