Warrants issued in Darfur conflict

The International Criminal Court on Wednesday issued its first arrest warrants in Sudan’s Darfur conflict, for a government minister and a former militia leader accused of war crimes.

Sudanese officials, however, said they would not hand over the pair, who are charged with dozens of counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The court alleges that the Sudanese government joined with militia groups in systematic attacks against civilians in Darfur as part of an effort to combat rebel movements.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced in the four-year conflict.

The Sudanese government denies backing the militias, commonly known as janjaweed.

The move by the Hague-based court is a strong indicator that it believes the Khartoum government is unlikely to fulfill its promise to prosecute the pair under its own judicial system. The court can step in only when a country fails to put suspects on trial.

But how the warrants are handled by Sudan, which initially made gestures of cooperation with the ICC, may be a test case for the fledgling court. The ICC has no ability to execute warrants and must rely on the goodwill of governments to hand over suspects.

That prospect appeared dim Wednesday: Sudanese officials said their nation was not a signatory to the court and didn’t recognize its actions.

“Sudan has nothing to do with this decision and had already announced that it would not cooperate with the ICC when it comes to trying Sudanese nationals outside of Sudan,” Justice Minister Mohammed Ali Mardi told reporters in Khartoum, the capital.

The United Nations Security Council, which passed a resolution in March 2005 requiring Sudan to cooperate with the international court’s investigators, is preparing to consider sanctions if diplomatic efforts fail to stop violence in Darfur.

“The government of the Sudan has a legal duty to arrest Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb,” said ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in a statement issued from The Hague. “This is the International Criminal Court’s decision, and the government has to respect it.”

Harun is currently Sudan’s minister of state for humanitarian affairs. The court charges that from 2003 to 2005, while a minister of state in charge of the “Darfur Security Desk,” Harun encouraged attacks on civilians and pillaging of villages in West Darfur. The warrant lists 42 counts against Harun, linked to a series of attacks.

The second suspect, who is known as Ali Kushayb, was a top militia leader who mediated between the armed groups and Sudan’s government, the warrant says.

He is charged with 50 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, torture and pillaging.

Kushayb, whose real name is Ali Mohammed Ali Abdalrahman, is being held in Khartoum on separate charges and cannot voluntarily appear before the international court in the Netherlands.

“The Security Council has obligated Sudan to cooperate with the ICC, and Sudanese officials should stop flouting their responsibility to comply,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, based in New York.

“The council needs to monitor Sudan’s conduct and insist that it hand over the suspects as required.”

The warrants may complicate efforts by the U.N. to deploy peacekeepers to Darfur. Sudanese officials have said they fear the soldiers would carry out the arrests.

Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, has agreed to allow a small joint force of U.N. and African Union soldiers to augment about 7,000 African troops already in the region. But Bashir has refused to accept a full force of 20,000 peacekeepers, saying that it would be tantamount to foreign occupation.

U.N. officials have dismissed those concerns, saying that the peacekeepers already in the south of Sudan could execute the warrants if necessary. The officials held out hope Wednesday that Sudan would decide to cooperate.

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maggie.farley@latimes.com