Sudanese leader not fearful of ICC charges

Yahoo:

Omar al-Bashir has emerged tarnished but apparently unbowed from the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court charging him with orchestrating a campaign that the U.N. says has killed 300,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes in Sudan’s western region.

“This regime is not in crisis,” said Mahjoub Mohammed Saleh, a respected analyst and co-founder of the independent newspaper al-Ayam.

Life flowed normally in the capital one day after prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the Netherlands-based court to issue a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest. There were no mass protests or any hint of hasty evacuations by foreigners, U.N. officials or aid workers.

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur announced it was temporarily relocating nonessential personnel to neighboring countries, but there were no figures immediately available on how many.

A Sudanese woman demonstrates in front of the republican palace in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 to support Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who had genocide charges filed against him at the International Criminal Court on Monday.

(AP Photo/Abd Raouf)

The pro-Khartoum Janjaweed militia. The UN is pulling non-essential staff from Darfur as Islamist protesters rallied behind Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir over allegations he masterminded a campaign of genocide in the region.

(AFP/Graphic)

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, pictured in March. The UN is preparing to fly non-essential staff from Darfur as supporters of Sudan President Omar al-Beshir planned protests in Khartoum to denounce the world court prosecutor’s call for him to be arrested for alleged war crimes

(AFP/File/Karim Sahib)

From WaPo:

Sudan’s U.N. envoy, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, called the court’s charges a “catastrophe” that will have “disastrous consequences” on peace efforts in Darfur, where a brutal government campaign against rebels and civilians has left as many as 450,000 people dead from disease and violence, and nearly half the region’s population displaced. The Sudanese government says those figures are exaggerated.

“We will never cooperate with the ICC,” Mohamad said, noting that Sudan, like the United States, is not a signatory to the court’s founding treaty. “This is a criminal move that will torpedo the march forward” of the country.

But the charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity leveled at Bashir — the court’s first charges against a sitting head of state — brought cautious applause from human rights activists and outright celebration in some of the sprawling, straw-hut camps found across Darfur, where more than 2.5 million displaced people now live at the mercy of foreign aid.

Technorati Tags: Sudan, Al-Beshir, Al-Bashir, Sudanese+President, Moreno-Ocampo, ICC, International+Criminal+Court, Darfur, war+crimes

Advertisement

Privacy Settings