Former dictator may face array of genocide charges

Sudan’s government has agreed to hand over Omar el-Bashir to the International Criminal Court, officials said, marking the highest-level commitment in years to send the deposed dictator to face charges of genocide and war crimes and seek a measure of justice for victims of his 30-year rule.

El-Bashir, 77, was ousted two years ago and has been imprisoned since then. He has been wanted by the international court in The Hague since 2009 over atrocities committed by his government in the western region of Darfur, where about 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million displaced in a war from 2003-08, according to the United Nations.

The court has pressed Sudanese officials in recent months to hand over el-Bashir and other leaders accused of crimes in Darfur. If he is transferred, it would mark a major step in the nascent Sudanese government’s efforts to heed victims’ demands for justice, hold rights abusers to account and end decades of impunity for perpetrators of atrocities.

On Wednesday, Sudan’s foreign minister, Mariam al-Mahdi, said the Cabinet had agreed to transfer el-Bashir after meeting with the international court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, according to the stateowned Sudan News Agency.

The decision from the civilian Cabinet is not final and is likely to require approval from the Sovereignty Council of Sudan — a 14-member body formed in 2019 to guide the country through a transition to democracy, which includes members of the military previously allied with el-Bashir.

el-Bashir, an army commander at the time, came to power in Sudan in 1989 after ousting the democratically elected government. For the next three decades, he ruled with an iron fist, overseeing a government that restricted media freedoms, curtailed human rights, crippled economic growth and waged war on its own people.

El-Bashir fought a war with the country’s south with the aim of keeping it under control. But as part of a peace agreement signed in Kenya in 2005, he agreed to a referendum that would decide the future of the south as an independent nation.

The enormous toll of death, displacement and human suffering pushed the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for him in 2009.