Sudan will hand over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) three former leaders including the ousted autocrat Omar al-Bashir, wanted in particular for "genocide" and crimes against humanity during the conflict in Darfur, announced Wednesday (August 11th). Minister of Foreign Affairs.
"The Council of Ministers has decided to hand over the wanted persons to the International Criminal Court," Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said, according to the official Suna news agency, during a meeting with the new attorney general of the court based in La. Haye, Karim Khan, visiting Khartoum for a week.
From 2003, the conflict in Darfur, a region in the west of the country, opposed the predominantly Arab regime of Omar al-Bashir and rebels from ethnic minorities who considered themselves marginalized.
It left about 300,000 dead and nearly 2.5 million displaced, mostly during the first years of violence, according to the United Nations.
Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in April 2019, after months of unprecedented popular movement.
In February 2020, the transitional power put in place after his fall had made a verbal commitment to promote the appearance of Omar al-Bashir before the ICC, which issued arrest warrants against he and other figures of the old regime, for "crimes against humanity" and "genocide" in Darfur.
Former governor and former defense minister handed over to the ICC
The two other regime officials who will be handed over to the ICC are the ex-governor of the state of South Kordofan, Ahmed Haroun, and the former defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, wanted for the same reasons.
Arrested after the fall of Omar al-Bashir, they are currently detained in Sudan.
A landmark peace agreement signed in October 2020 between the transitional government and several rebel groups insisted on the need for "full and unlimited cooperation" with the ICC.
The Sudanese cabinet voted last week in favor of ratifying the Rome Statute of the ICC.
The Sudanese minister stressed on Wednesday "the importance" of her country's cooperation with the ICC "to obtain justice for the victims of the Darfur war".
Already convicted of corruption in December 2019, the former president is currently being held in Kober prison in Khartoum.
He is also on trial by the Sudanese justice for his role in the coup d'état which brought him to power in 1989. But his trial has been postponed several times since July 2020, the lawyers for the accused advancing procedural arguments .
With AFP
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