The Hague, Netherlands – The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants Wednesday in the murderous Darfur conflict, seeking to try a government minister and a militia leader on charges of mass slayings, rape and torture. Sudan immediately refused to arrest them.
After studying prosecution evidence for two months, a three-judge panel decided to seek the arrests rather than to summon the suspects to surrender, saying the evidence supported 51 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The warrants against Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister, Ahmed Muhammed Harun, and the janjaweed militia’s “colonel of colonels,” Ali Kushayb, could be a crucial step toward bringing atrocities in the Sudanese province to international justice.
Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch said it signaled “the days of absolute impunity … for horrible crimes in Darfur are winding down.”
But Sudan was defiant.
“Our position is very, very clear – the ICC cannot assume any jurisdiction to judge any Sudanese outside the country,” Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi told The Associated Press in the Sudanese capital. “Whatever the ICC does is totally unrealistic, illegal, and repugnant to any form of international law.”
Sudan was not party to the Rome convention that set up the court, he said, implying that it was not obliged to implement its warrants. The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said Sudan was legally bound to arrest the men.
