A leading Darfur rebel group hailed an international appeals court’s decision on Wednesday to order a review of the dropping of genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir in March last year on five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes committed in Darfur, but did not press genocide charges, a decision it must now reconsider.
“The decision taken by the ICC was a good decision, a natural decision given the role of al-Bashir as head of the army and state,” said Ahmed Hussein Adam, spokesperson for the Justice and Equality Movement, the most heavily armed of the Darfur rebel groups.
“It is a great victory for the population of Darfur and justice,” he said.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, having implicated the Sudanese leader in the deaths of 35 000 people, had lodged an appeal against the court’s decision not to include the three counts of genocide he had asked for.
He accuses al-Bashir of having “personally instructed” his forces to annihilate three ethnic groups — the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa in Darfur.
The judges of the appeals court said in their decision that the standard of proof on which the pre-trial chamber of the court rejected the genocide charge against al-Bashir was too demanding.
They directed it to issue “a new decision using the correct standard of proof”.
Moreno-Ocampo has claimed to have “detailed evidence on the mobilisation and use of the entire Sudanese state apparatus for the purpose of destroying a substantial part of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in the entire region of Darfur during more than six years”.
“His intent was genocide,” Moreno-Ocampo said, adding that al-Bashir had ordered his forces “not to bring back any wounded or prisoners”.
The United Nations says up to 300 000 people have died and 2,7-million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum in February 2003.
The Sudanese government says 10 000 people have been killed. — AFP