ICC prosecutor arrives in Sudan to go over Bashir case
The International Criminal Court's prosecutor found its way to Sudan late Saturday to go over cooperation with local authorities over bringing to trial those internationally wanted for war crimes and genocide in the country's Darfur conflict, the Sudanese official news agency said.
Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's office said in a statement that ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other court officials would stay static in Sudan until Wednesday. It is the first announced visit for Bensouda to Sudan. "The ICC delegation will discuss ways of cooperation between the Government of Sudan and the ICC with regard to the suspects against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants."
read the statement, which didn't name any of the suspects. Among those wanted by the international court is former Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who has been in jail in Khartoum since his ouster this past year and is facing several trials in Sudanese courts related to his three decades of strongman rule and the uprising that helped oust him. The conflict in Sudan's Darfur region broke out when rebels from the territory's ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Al-Bashir's government responded with a scorched-earth campaign of aerial bombings and unleashed militias known as Janjaweed, who are accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes. The ICC charged Al-Bashir, 76, with war crimes and genocide for allegedly masterminding the campaign of attacks in Darfur. Sudanese prosecutors started the other day their own investigation into the Darfur conflict.
Also indicted by the court are two other senior figures of Al-Bashir's rule: Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, interior and defense minister during a lot of the conflict, and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time and later the first choice of Al-Bashir's ruling party. Both, Hussein and Haroun, have been under arrest in Khartoum because the Sudanese military, under pressure from protesters, ousted Al-Bashir in April 2019.
The court also indicted rebel leader Abdulla Banda, whose whereabouts aren't known, and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb, who surrendered to authorities in the Central African Republic, Sudan's neighbor, in June before being flown to The Hague to handle justice a lot more than 13 years after ICC judges issued an arrest warrant against him. Sudan's transitional government, which has promised democratic reforms and is led by a variety of civilian and military leaders, has previously said that war crime suspects including Al-Bashir will be tried prior to the ICC, however, the trial venue is a matter for negotiations with The Hague-based court.
