The International Criminal Court (ICC) plans to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will seek the warrant on Monday. It would be the first time the Hague-based court has sought to charge a sitting head of state with those crimes, the Post reported, citing diplomats and UN officials.
But some UN officials are concerned that Moreno-Ocampo’s move could complicate the peace process in Darfur and trigger a military response by Sudanese forces or proxies against UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, the Post said.
Sudan’s UN ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad warned the newspaper of “grave repercussions” if Ocampo indicts Bashir.
On Thursday the office of Moreno-Ocampo said he planned to unveil a new case involving crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region next week, but it did not give the names of those to be charged.
His office said, however, that the case would cover “crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years.”
The tribunal will then decide whether to issue arrest warrants or summons for the individuals to be named.
Mohamad told the Post that ICC charges against Bashir or other Sudanese officials would “destroy” the international Darfur peace process.
“Ocampo is playing with fire,” he said. “If the United Nations is serious about its engagement with Sudan, it should tell this man to suspend what he is doing with this so-called indictment. There will be grave repercussions.”
The move comes two days after seven UN peacekeepers were killed and 22 were wounded in an ambush of a UN convoy in Darfur.
UN officials in Sudan said that the Janjaweed — state-backed Arab militia — were suspected of carrying out the attack, while the Sudanese government blamed the attack on rebels in Darfur.
The Post said that representatives of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members — China, Britain, the US, France and Russia — met with UN officials on Thursday on the safety of Darfur peacekeepers in the wake of the attack.
It said that peacekeepers are already being moved to safer areas, and that the UN was distributing food and equipment in preparation for a possible disruption of supplies to the force by Sudan’s government.
“All bets are off; anything could happen,” one UN official told the newspaper.
“The mission is so fragile, it would not take much for the whole thing to come crashing down,” the official said.
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