Sudan was brought to the task

For the first time, a sitting head of state may be arrested

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, 56-year-old Argentine Luis Moreno-Ocampo, yesterday demanded the arrest of 64-year-old Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir (pictured) for crimes in Darfur , including the murder of 35 thousand of its inhabitants. The three ICC judges have a month and a half to decide whether to accept the case against al-Bashir. If they issue a warrant for his arrest, he will become the first sitting head of state to be prosecuted by the ICC. The UN Security Council asked the court to investigate the situation in Darfur in March 2005. The ICC was created with the assistance of the UN in 1998 as an independent judicial body, and has actually been operational since 2002.

In Darfur province in western Sudan, since February 2003, pro-government paramilitary groups of ethnic Arabs, the Janjaweed, have been fighting with the rebel groups Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, representing the local black population. According to the UN, violence and famine have killed up to 300 thousand Darfuris and turned another 2.7 million people into refugees. Sudanese authorities call these figures greatly exaggerated and deny the accusations.

Judge Moreno-Ocampo urged “not to wait for the Darfuris to die.” He indicted al-Bashir on ten counts, charging him with three counts of genocide against the Zaghawa, Masalit and Fur ethnic groups, five counts of crimes against humanity in the form of murder, forced mass transfers, torture and rape, and two counts of war crimes in the form of looting of cities. and villages of the province. According to the prosecutor, “the entire state apparatus of Sudan is involved in terror in Darfur.”

Sudan's position, its government said yesterday, is that the country is not a co-founder of the ICC and therefore "it does not exist for us." According to Khartoum, “the irresponsible step of this court will have a very negative impact not only on the stability and peace process in Sudan itself, but also on the entire region.” The Sudanese Foreign Ministry warned the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the European Union and the African Union about the “catastrophic consequences” of the ICC’s actions. At the same time, they were assured of Sudan’s readiness to “continue the policy of a peaceful settlement in Darfur.” Khartoum politicians are calling on Moscow and Beijing for help. The Chinese have invested over $3 billion in Sudanese oil projects, which meet 7% of China's needs for “black gold.”

The legal conflict puzzled UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said yesterday that the prosecution of the Sudanese president “could have an extremely negative impact on efforts to maintain peace in the region.” The League of Arab States also thinks the same: this Saturday, at the insistence of Sudan, it will hold an extraordinary meeting of the foreign ministers of 22 member countries of the league. The African Union, in a letter to The Hague, warned the ICC against “abuse of charges against African leaders,” stressing that “the search for justice must be pursued in a way that does not undermine efforts to achieve lasting peace in Darfur.”

In 2007, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Sudan's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ahmad Harun, and the commander of the security forces, Ali Kushayb. Sudan then responded that it would deal with the issue of war crimes itself.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN