ICC finds evidence of Darfur massacres, prepares prosecution

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor told the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that his office had gathered significant evidence of "large-scale" atrocities committed in Darfur. Although investigations had been hampered by ongoing insecurity in the volatile western Sudanese region, the ICC had been able to document thousands of alleged direct killings of civilians and would prosecute a sequence of cases involving possible war crimes. "The available information indicates that these killings include a significant number of large-scale massacres, with hundreds of victims in each incident," Luis Moreno Ocampo said. In most of the investigated incidents, eyewitnesses said perpetrators made statements "reinforcing the targeted nature of the attacks, such as ‘We will kill all the blacks’ and ‘We will drive you out of this land.’" The chief prosecutor stressed that he would not draw any conclusions regarding allegations that some of the crimes had been committed with specific genocidal intent until the completion of a full and impartial investigation. The Council referred the matter to the ICC in March 2005, after a UN inquiry into whether genocide occurred in Darfur found the Sudanese government responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommended referring the dossier to the ICC. The special courts for Darfur, established by the Sudanese authorities on 7 June 2005, have further complicated the case. A Ministry of Justice statement challenging the ICC’s jurisdiction made explicit reference to Article 17 of the Rome Statute, which requires the ICC to reject a case as inadmissible if the state which has jurisdiction is genuinely investigating or prosecuting the case. Ocampo told the Council, however, that "it does not appear that the national authorities have investigated or prosecuted, or are investigating or prosecuting, cases that are or will be the focus of ICC attention." Meanwhile, in a statement on Wednesday, the African Union announced the establishment of the Darfur Ceasefire Commission (CFC), responsible for the implementation and monitoring of the ceasefire provisions of the 5 May Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other previous ceasefire agreements between the groups fighting in Darfur. AU chief Baba Gana Kingibe attended the inauguration of the CFC in the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher, together with representatives of all rebel groups and the government of Sudan. Also present were Said Djinnit, the AU commissioner for peace and security, and Jean-Marie Guehenno, and UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, who are currently leading the AU/UN joint technical assessment mission in Darfur. The AU/UN team is currently in Darfur to determine what measures are needed to strengthen the region’s ill-equipped AU peacekeeping force and to examine the requirements for a possible transition to a UN operation. Although the government in Khartoum has repeatedly rejected such a transition, it allowed the assessment team to go into Darfur after weeks of diplomatic haggling. "Our position still is against any intervention in Darfur," Sudan's state minister for foreign affairs, Al Wasilla El-Samani, told reporters in Nairobi on Wednesday. "We believe the African Union has got the personnel there. The AU has gained enough experience for managing the situation. What it needs now is logistics and financial support." "People have the strong belief that UN troops will complicate things more than solve problems," he added. "What we need from the UN is all the specialised agencies ... to come and try to solve the problems which ... led to the violence, which is the lack of water, lack of schools, lack of very basic clinics, lack of roads, lack of training." El-Samani also called on the two rebel factions who refused to sign the DPA to refrain from using force and try to achieve their goals by political means. "Whoever has got any claims, who want to fight it through the democratic process as a political party - there is no bound on any political parties to operate in Sudan," he said. "But if they use force, we have our authority as a government and the commitment made by the UN and the AU and the international community - [that] they are not going to give anybody any chance to use force against the DPA." The minister emphasised that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the 21-year north-south civil war, was the best way to prepare the country for free elections in 2008. "I appeal that they [the Darfur rebels] should think nationally, rather than regionally," he said. "We want to make sure that all the commissions which will prepare the country [for elections] - like the election commission, the constitutional commission - we want them [the remaining rebel groups] to be part of that."