U.N. Court Report Says Darfur Killings Targeted

The U.N.-backed court investigating war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region has documented thousands of civilian deaths, hundreds of alleged rapes and a “significant number” of massacres that killed hundreds of people at a time, the top prosecutor said Wednesday.

Many witnesses and victims have reported that three ethnic groups in particular -- the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa -- had been singled out for attack in Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in a report to the United Nations Security Council.

Those details are among the strongest indication so far that Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, has uncovered substantial evidence of so-called ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

“In most of the incidents ... there are eyewitness accounts that the perpetrators made statements reinforcing the targeted nature of the attacks, such as ‘We will kill all the black’ and ‘We will drive you out of this land,’ ” the report says.

A special U.N. investigative commission concluded in January 2005 that crimes against humanity had occurred in Darfur, where an estimated 180,000 people have died in violence that began in 2003. Three months later, the Security Council voted to have the Hague-based ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, prosecute those behind the slaughter.

The United States has opposed the court but agreed not to veto the measure. U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton, who has strongly criticized the ICC, did not attend Moreno-Ocampo’s briefing because he was meeting with the U.N. Staff Union.

In his report to the council, Moreno-Ocampo said his office had received reports of hundreds of rapes, but that it had evidence of significant underreporting as well.

The three Darfur tribes that Moreno Ocampo mentioned were among those that rebelled against alleged unjust treatment by the Sudanese government in February 2003.

The government is accused of backing Arabic-speaking militia fighters known as janjaweed who have attacked villagers from those tribes in Darfur. The government denies supporting the janjaweed but agreed under a peace accord last month to disarm and disband them.