International Criminal Court (ICC) Attorney General Karim Khan said on Wednesday he had obtained a promise of “full cooperation” from Sudan in Darfur, a vast region in the west of the country where violence has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. dead.
The words I just heard from the president of the Sovereignty Council [mais importante autoridade política do Sudão] they are very encouraging”, declared the ICC prosecutor during a press conference in Khartoum, at the end of his meeting with the head of the army Abddel Fattah al-Burhan, who came to power during the coup last October.
Karim Khan added that “the challenge now is to get her to [a promessa] in practice”, pointing out that Al-Burhan assured “that justice will be done for the people of Darfur”.
The attorney general is currently on a visit to Sudan, where he met with the number two of the military regime, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, on Tuesday, before meeting with General Al-Burhan on Wednesday.
During his trips to the troubled Darfur region, Khan visited three camps for internally displaced persons, including Kalma.
Darfur has been ravaged by a civil war that began in 2003 between Omar al-Bashir’s Arab-majority regime and ethnic minority insurgents who denounced discrimination, with the former president dispatching the Janjaweed armed militia to put down the rebellion.
According to human rights organizations, Al-Bashir has carried out a “scorched earth policy”, raping, killing, looting and burning villages.
Al-Bashir has since been deposed in 2019 and later detained and remains subject to an ICC arrest warrant, like other former regime figures, accused of committing “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”.
The conflict in Darfur has left around 300,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations.
This Wednesday, the ICC Attorney General stressed the importance of carrying out “independent” and “credible” investigations after having lamented the previous day, during a videoconference intervention before the UN Security Council, the “decrease” in the cooperation from the Sudanese authorities.
The country, one of the poorest in the world, remains mired in a political and economic crisis since the October 25 coup.
This coup derailed the fragile democratic transition established after the overthrow of al-Bashir.
Many weapons are still in circulation in Darfur, which remains mired in violence despite an agreement signed in 2020 between authorities in Khartoum and the main rebel groups, including those in Darfur. Since then, repentant rebel leaders have joined the government.
Source: Observadora
