Concerned about the situation in Sudan, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan announced on Thursday that he had launched an investigation into war crimes in the country. The deadly conflict between two generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, has already claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
First modification:
3 min
The escalation of violence in Sudan is causing “great concern”. For this reason, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has decided to open a new investigation into war crimes in Sudan, announced its prosecutor Karim Khan on Thursday, July 13, when presenting a report to the UN Security Council.
For three months, the country has been plunged into chaos as a result of a conflict between two generals vying for power.
The UN Security Council already asked the Hague-based tribunal in 2005 to look into the situation in Sudan’s Darfur region, and issued an arrest warrant for former leader Omar al-Bashir, which included charges of genocide.
“The truth is that we run the risk, in this Council and in the world – and as more and more information becomes available – of allowing history to repeat itself; the same appalling history that led this Council to refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005,” Karim Khan told the council.
Its report states that “the current security situation in Sudan and the escalation of violence during the current hostilities are causes for great concern.” Therefore, the Prosecutor’s Office can “confirm that it has opened an investigation into the incidents that occurred in the context of the current hostilities.”
The report claims there have been “a wide range of communications” about alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan since fighting began in April. Alleged sexual and gender-based crimes, “including alleged gang rape campaigns,” “particularly troubling,” are the focus of the new investigation, he adds.
Risk of new war crimes
Since April 15, the head of the Sudanese army, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, a close ally of Egypt, has been at war with his former number two, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RPF).
The conflict for power between the army and the paramilitaries has already caused almost 3,000 deaths and three million displaced persons and refugees, according to the UN.
The UN envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, now persona non grata in Khartoum, has called for the two generals to be “brought to account”.
The bodies of at least 87 people allegedly killed last month in Sudan by paramilitary forces and their allies have been buried in a mass grave in Darfur, the UN said on Thursday.
According to Karim Khan’s report, the risk of further war crimes is “exacerbated by the clear and prolonged failure to meet their obligations by relevant actors, including the Sudanese government.”
lack of justice
Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, was ravaged by a civil war that began in 2003 between the Arab-majority regime of Omar al-Bashir and ethnic minority insurgents who denounced discrimination. Omar al-Bashir sent the armed Janjaweed militia against the rebellion, which later gave rise to the Rapid Support Forces.
Omar al-Bashir, 79, along with his leaders Ahmed Haroun and Abdel Raheem Hussein, have been accused by the ICC of “genocide” and crimes against humanity during the Darfur conflict for more than ten years.
The lack of justice for crimes committed in Darfur in the early 2000s “sowed the seeds for this latest cycle of violence and suffering,” according to Karim Khan. Even before the recent clashes, there had been a “further deterioration in the cooperation of the Sudanese authorities”, according to his report.
The only person who has appeared before ICC judges so far is Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, a former leader of the Janjaweed militia, also known by his nom de guerre Ali Kosheib.
*With AFP; adapted from its original in French
