The International Criminal Court (ICC) has added three genocide counts to the charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir over the war in Darfur, in a move hailed as a “victory” by rebels.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that [Bashir] acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” said a new warrant issued on Monday — the court’s first for genocide.
Khartoum dismissed the move as a “political” decision by The Hague-based court, but the rebel Justice and Equality Movement described it as a “victory for the people of Darfur and the entire humanity.”
“It will give hope to the people of Darfur that justice will be made,” spokesman Ahmad Hussein told reporters.
In Khartoum, Sudanese Information Minister Kamal Obeid said that the “adding of the genocide accusation confirms that the ICC is a political court.”
“The ICC decision is of no concern to us, us the Sudanese government. We focus on development,” Obeid said in a statement to the official Suna news agency.
In March last year, the ICC issued a warrant for Bashir’s arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, its first ever for a sitting head of state.
However, that warrant did not include three genocide charges requested by prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who then appealed the court’s decision.
In February, the ICC appeals chamber ordered judges to rethink their decision to omit genocide, saying they had made an “error in law” by setting the burden of proof too high.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “deeply concerned by the nature of charges against president Bashir,” spokesman Farhan Haq told a press briefing in New York.
Ban urged the Khartoum government “to provide its full support to the work of the ICC and address issues of justice and reconciliation,” he said.
In Monday’s decision, the court said there were reasonable grounds to believe that villages and towns “were selected on the basis of their ethnic composition” for attack by Sudanese government forces.
“Towns and villages inhabited by other tribes, as well as rebel locations, were bypassed in order to attack towns and villages known to be inhabited by civilians belonging to the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” the court said.
It also appeared likely that “acts of rape, torture and forcible displacement were committed against members of the targeted ethnic groups,” the court said.
The prosecutor had presented evidence of government forces contaminating the wells and water pumps of villages inhabited by these groups, who were also subject to forcible transfer “in furtherance of the genocidal policy,” it said.
“One of the reasonable conclusions that can be drawn is that ... the conditions of life inflicted on the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups were calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a part of those ethnic groups,” the decision said.
As president and commander-in-chief, Bashir likely “played an essential role in coordinating” a common plan to this end, the judgment said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS