WAR CRIMES SUSPECTED IN DARFUR
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor told the U.N. Security Council on Monday that his “clear finding” is that there are grounds to believe both Sudan’s armed forces and paramilitary rivals are committing crimes during conflict in the western Darfur region.
Karim Khan, who recently visited neighboring Chad, where tens of thousands of people from Darfur have fled, warned that those he met in refugee camps fear Darfur will become “the forgotten atrocity.” He urged Sudan’s government to provide his investigators with multiple-entry visas and respond to 35 requests for assistance.
Sudan plunged into chaos last April when long-simmering tensions between the military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary erupted into street battles in the capital, Khartoum, and other areas.
Darfur, which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003, has been an epicenter of the current conflict, an arena of ethnic violence where paramilitary troops and allied Arab militias have been attacking African ethnic groups.
The fighting has displaced more than 7 million people and killed 12,000, according to the U.N. Local doctors’ groups, and activists say the death toll is far 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’s my clear finding, my clear assessment, that there are grounds to believe that presently Rome Statute crimes are being committed in Darfur by both the Sudanese armed forces and 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.