Beshir charged with genocide

2008-07-15 08:39

The Hague - The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant for Sudan's president on charges of waging a campaign of genocide and rape in Darfur, a high-risk strategy that could backfire against the people in the war-torn desert region.

The indictment on Monday marked the first time prosecutors at the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal had issued charges against a sitting head of state, though President Omar al-Beshir was unlikely to face trial any time soon.

Sudan denounced the indictment as a political stunt, saying it would ignore any arrest order and was considering all options, including an unspecified military response.

One Sudanese parliamentarian said his government could no longer guarantee the safety of United Nations staff in the troubled region.

Human rights groups okays prosecutor's move

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges against al-Beshir related to a campaign of extermination of three Darfur tribes that the UN said had claimed 300 000 lives and driven 2.5 million people from their homes.

A three-judge panel was expected to take two to three months to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

Human rights groups welcomed the prosecutor's move, but cautioned it could provoke a violent backlash from Sudan, while offering little prospect that al-Beshir would be arrested and sent for trial to The Hague. The court, which began work in 2002, had no enforcement arm and relies on governments to act as its police force.

"The prosecutor's legal strategy also poses major risks for the fragile peace and security environment in Sudan, with a real chance of greatly increasing the suffering of very large numbers of its people," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a statement.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sudan's ambassador to the UN, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, said al-Beshir was weighing all options, including a military response.

Sudan's anger 'can undermine talks'

Al-Beshir likely would attend the UN General Assembly in New York in September, and Sudan would consider any attempt to arrest him a declaration of war, Mohamed said.

In Khartoum, the deputy parliament speaker, Mohammed al-Hassan al-Ameen, warned that Sudan was unable to guarantee "the safety of any individual."

"The UN asks us to keep its people safe, but how can we guarantee their safety when they want to seize our head of state?" al-Ameen said on state TV.

Sudan's anger could undermine talks to resolve the decades-old enmity between north and south Sudan, and endanger efforts by relief workers and an ill-equipped UN-African Union peacekeeping force to protect 2.5 million people living in refugee camps, the Crisis Group said.

"These are significant risks, particularly given that the likelihood of actually executing any warrant issued against al-Beshir is remote, at least in the short term," it added.

- AP