International Criminal Court: ICC Prosecutor Updates U.N. Security Council on Sudan (Darfur)

As previously reported, the ICC has been investigating the situation in Sudan (Darfur) for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes since July 1, 2002, at the request of the U.N. Security Council.[1]

On June 8, 2011, the ICC Prosecutor made his semi-annual report to the U.N. Security Council on the status of his office’s investigations and prosecutions in this matter.[2] The following are the main points of that report:

• There are three pending ICC prosecutions from Sudan (Darfur). In two of them–Harun and Kushayh and Bashir–the defendants are still at large, and thus the proceedings have not really commenced. In the third case against two rebel commanders, the parties have agreed to certain facts and limited the trial to three issues: (1) whether a certain attack by the rebels was unlawful; (2) if the attack is deemed to be unlawful, whether the defendants were aware of the factual circumstances that established its illegality; and (3) whether the African Union Mission in Sudan was a peacekeeping mission in accordance with the U.N. Charter. In this third case, the defendants do not dispute their participation in the attack and both have committed to surrender voluntarily to the ICC.

• The Prosecutor also said his office was considering presenting a fourth Sudanese case to the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber for its decision whether or not to issue arrest warrants.

• All of these cases concern past alleged crimes. In addition, the Prosecutor reported that the following crimes were continuing: bombing attacks targeting or indiscriminately affecting civilians; ground attacks targeting civilians; widespread sexual and gender-based violence; attacks on human rights defenders, civil society members and community leaders; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to cause physical destruction of groups of people; forcible transferring of populations; recruitment and use of child soldiers; and concealing information on crimes.

• The government of Sudan has announced its investigations of these alleged crimes and the creation of new entities to do so, but there are no such investigations, and the announcements are parts of a governmental policy of covering up the crimes and avoiding international scrutiny.

• When the ICC exposes these crimes, the reaction of President Bashir and other leaders has been “to deny the crimes entirely, attribute them to other factors (such as inter-tribal feud), divert attention by publicizing . . . ceasefire agreements that are violated as soon as they are announced and threaten the international community with retaliation and even more crimes. . . . Bashir has successfully transformed public knowledge of his criminal responsibility as a negotiating tool.”

• “It is the challenging responsibility of the . . . Security Council to use the information exposed by the [ICC] to stop the crimes in Darfur, to protect the civilians in Darfur. The [ICC] Prosecution, fulfilling its mandate, is willing to assist.”

After the submission of this report, the Council’s 15 members went into private session to discuss the report. They were joined by representatives of 37 other countries.[3]

Immediately after this Security Council meeting there were reports of a “growing sense of panic” in central Sudan with 60,000 displaced people, blocked relief convoys, ethnic clashes and many deaths. This week the Council was given an alarming report about current violence and threatened ethnic cleansing.[4] In short, the armed conflict in Darfur has not stopped. Nor has the illegal intentional practice of targeting civilians.

Sudanese President Bashir’s evasion of arrest to face ICC charges continues to make the news. On June 13th, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, addressed African leaders at a meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and pressed them to abandon authoritarian rulers. President Bashir also was in Addis Ababa for the meeting, but left before Clinton arrived.[5] On June 14th Amnesty International urged Malaysia to withdraw an invitation to President Bashir to attend an upcoming economic forum and to arrest him if he came. On June 16th Amnesty International made a similar plea to China after its announcement that Bashir would be visiting that country next week supposedly to talk about seeking peace in his country.[6]