The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor will name the first suspects accused of committing war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region in Sudan by next Tuesday. Some 200,000 people have died since the Darfur conflict erupted four years ago. The Sudanese government rejects the ICC’s authority, saying its own judicial system is capable of trying suspects.
Human rights groups have welcomed the move, saying it should help bring an end to impunity for war criminals there.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced to from their home in fighting which erupted way back in February 2003, when ethnic Africans took up arms complaining of decades of negligence and discrimination from their government. To resist them Khartoom took help of Arab Janjaweed militia group. Number of international reports and experts has strong evidence of that.
But Sudan’s President, Omar al-Bashir, denies involvement and says the level of conflict in the region has been greatly exaggerated by the US and the West.
ICC Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has spent two years examining evidence gathered by a UN investigative team after the Security Council voted to forward him a list of 51 names suspected of crimes against humanity. He said the crimes investigated included killings, tortures, rapes, looting, forced displacement and persecution. He said, ‘We hope to contribute to the prevention of future crimes in the region.”