The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into an escalation of fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region since mid-April, including reports of killings, rape, arson, displacement and crimes affecting children. , the top prosecutor told the United Nations on Thursday.
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The regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting in the capital Khartoum and other areas of Sudan in a power struggle that erupted in mid-April.
More than 3 million people were uprooted, including more than 700,000 who fled to neighboring countries. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that Sudan, Africa’s third-largest country by land area, is on the brink of a full-scale civil war that could devastate the wider region.
“The office can confirm that it has started investigations in relation to incidents that occurred in the context of the current conflict,” Prosecutor Karim Khan’s office said in a report to the UN Security Council.
ICC prosecutors are “closely following reports of extrajudicial killings, burning of houses and markets, and looting, in Al Geneina, West Darfur, as well as the killing and displacement of civilians in North Darfur and other locations throughout Darfur,” the report said.
It also investigates “allegations of sex- and gender-based crimes, including mass rapes and alleged reports of violence against and affecting children,” it said.
In El Geneina, witnesses reported waves of attacks by Arab militias and the RSF against non-Arab Masalit people, the city’s largest community, sending tens of thousands of people who fled to nearby Chad.
While the ICC cannot currently work in Sudan due to the security situation, it intends to do so as soon as possible, the report said. Under the UN Security Council resolution of 2005, its jurisdiction is limited to the Darfur region.
The ICC has four outstanding arrest warrants related to the earlier conflict in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, including one against former Sudanese President Omar al Bashir on charges of genocide.
Al Bashir and two of his former ministers who are also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes in Darfur are in prison in Sudan. The army said Bashir and one of the former ministers, Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, were transferred to a military hospital before the outbreak of fighting. Another former minister, Ahmed Haroun, said he was released from prison with others 10 days after the start of the conflict.
Khan said he had sent a request to the Sudanese government, which has a long history of not cooperating with the ICC, to find out the current location of the suspects.
In April, the ICC opened its first trial on crimes in Darfur in the case of alleged Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman.
(Reuters)
