Sudan has agreed to hand former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir and others to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Darfur, a member of Khartoum’s ruling body said on Tuesday.
The Hague, Netherlands-based ICC has charged al-Bashir and three of his former aides — Ahmed Haroon, Abdulrahim Mohamed Hussain and Ali Kushied — with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sudan’s western region during a devastating conflict that began in 2003.
“Those who have been indicted by the ICC, they have to go there,” Mohamed Hassan al-Taishay, a member of Sudan’s ruling sovereign council, said in a statement.
“One of them is al-Bashir and [there are] three others,” he later told journalists in the South Sudanese capital of Juba, where a government delegation was meeting rebel groups from Darfur.
“We agreed that we fully supported the ICC and we agreed ... that the four criminals have to be handed over,” al-Taishay said.
“We fully supported the claim that the ICC wanted them and they have to be handed over,” he added.
He did not specify when the decision would be carried out.
Al-Taishay said the Juba talks, still ongoing, focused on justice and reconciliation in Darfur, where the UN says about 300,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict erupted.
Al-Taishay said they had agreed several mechanisms for achieving peace in Darfur, including the establishment of a special court to investigate crimes in the region.
However, “first, all those who have been indicted by the ICC should appear before the ICC,” he said.
“We cannot achieve justice unless we treat the suffering of the victims because this is a truth that we can’t escape from,” al-Taishay added.
A member of the rebel delegation in Juba also confirmed the move.
“We have agreed with the sovereign council in Khartoum to rule Sudan based on justice, especially on issues related to the ICC,” Nimir Mohamed Abdurahman told reporters.
The conflict in Darfur, the size of France, erupted when ethnic minority African rebels took up arms against al-Bashir’s then Arab-dominated government, accusing it of marginalizing the region economically and politically.
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