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WORLD COURT MOVES TO PROSECUTE SUDAN MINISTER OVER DARFUR
Newspaper Review by: RICH2
WORLD COURT MOVES TO PROSECUTE SUDAN MINISTER OVER DARFUR EAST AFRICAN
MARCH 5-11, 2007
The international criminal court (ICC) is an international court established by the Rome statue in 1998 to hear cases of genocide, war crimes against humanity. The chief prosecutor of ICC has issued summons against Khartoum’s state minister for humanitarian affairs, Ahmad Muhammad Harun and a leader of the government backed Janjaweed militia, Ali Muhammad Ali. This comes after two years since the UN security council asked the ICC to investigate atrocities in Sudan’s western most region where as many as half a million people of African ethic origin have died in the past years. The proposed summon of Harun is significant since this the first time any member in a sitting government is summoned. Various reports indicate that the Sudanese government and some members of the National Islamic Front (NIF) could be involved in Darfur deaths. A Human rights watch report (HRW) tilted ‘’Entrenching impunity: government responsibility for international crimes in Darfur’’ named 22 individuals including president Omar El Basher, second vice president Ali Osman Taha and the then interior minister of defense, Harun and Ali as being responsible for Janjaweed abuses in Darfur. The report was based on government documents and eye account witnesses. The report gave an account on the government ‘’scorched-earth’’ campaign against Darfur’s black population. The Sudanese government has on many occasions rejected moves to deploy a lager combined African union-UN force to stop the violence in Darfur. The threat of sanctions Sudan government atrocities in Darfur has not yielded any positives results so far. The summons against Harun and Ali will however have to be presented before a pre-trail chamber of ICC judges who will decide whether the evidence presented by the prosecutor sufficient. If the judges find there is reasonable evidence that the two men are responsible for the alleged crimes then court will move to issue formal summons against them. The Khartoum government is not happy with this development and has rejected any calls for co-operation with ICC for arrest or extradition of the named individuals. The refusal of the Sudanese government to co-operate with ICC casts doubt whether the two named individuals will ever appear in Hague for trial.
Published: April 23, 2007
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