Urging decisive action against Sudanese war-crimes suspects, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor said on Friday he would announce details of a new case next week against senior players in the Darfur conflict.
“I will inform the … [United Nations] Security Council on June 5 when I will present my second case on Darfur,” prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters in The Hague, the tribunal’s permanent seat.
He is due to brief the Security Council in New York on the situation in Sudan’s eastern Darfur region next Thursday, the same week that a delegation of the council is due to visit Khartoum.
The new case would start “in the near future”, said Moreno-Ocampo, declining to reveal how many people would be targeted, or whom.
He did say they would be “at a higher level” than Sudanese Secretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun, who has yet to be detained despite the ICC issuing a warrant for his arrest a year ago.
“Haroun is still in the middle of this operation … It is obvious that he is not arrested, he is a minister, so he is not alone,” Moreno-Ocampo said.
He added he was collecting evidence “to prove criminal responsibility at a higher level than Haroun”.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told the Security Council last month that the death toll in Darfur had risen to 300 000, with more than two million people having fled their homes since the government enlisted militia allies to put down a revolt in the region in 2003. — AFP