Push for Sudan warrant gets a mixed response

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed genocide charges Monday against Sudan’s president, igniting a debate over whether the move would help end the long-standing violence in the country’s Darfur region or undermine prospects for peace.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo submitted evidence intended to show that Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir intentionally tried to wipe out a “substantial part” of three tribes in Sudan’s western Darfur region based on their ethnicity. Members of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa groups rebelled against the government in 2003. When Bashir’s army failed to defeat the armed movements, he sent lawless militias known as janjaweed after the people, declared Moreno-Ocampo, who also filed charges of crimes against humanity against the Sudanese president.

Bashir’s “motives were largely political,” the prosecutor said. “His alibi was a counterinsurgency. His intent was genocide.”

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, predicted that the prosecutor’s action would eviscerate the peace process.

“This would lead to disastrous consequences for the entire region,” he said. “Without a head of state, with whom are you going to talk?”

Although Bashir has few supporters in the international community, the prosecutor’s move has divided human rights groups and U.N. agencies who disagree on whether it will be long-needed leverage against the government or will spark chaos.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concerns about possible retaliation against peacekeepers and aid workers in Darfur, and called on the government of Sudan to protect their security.

But John Prendergast, a former State Department official who has helped bring Darfur to the world’s attention, said that holding leaders accountable for war crimes ultimately promotes peace, and that it wouldn’t disrupt talks in Sudan because there currently are none.

“The peace process is dead,” he said. “There is no process, and even more importantly, there is no leverage. Suddenly, a new variable has entered the equation in the form of the request for an arrest warrant.”

Prendergast added that the Security Council can suspend a court investigation for a year, and that prospect is so far the best inducement for the government to change its behavior.

As the head of the state, the army and the ruling party, Bashir holds ultimate responsibility for the systematic attacks against civilians and rape of women, Moreno-Ocampo argued.

The prosecutor said he had found no smoking gun, such as a master plan devised by Bashir, but he presented victims’ testimony, government documents and other evidence as pieces of a puzzle that combined to form an image of criminality. “He used the whole state apparatus, he used the army, he enrolled the militia janjaweed. They all report to him, they all obey him. His control is absolute,” Moreno-Ocampo said.

If the court’s three judges agree that the evidence supports a credible case, a decision expected to take two to three months, they will issue a warrant for Bashir. Sudan is unlikely to hand over the president, but the warrant would mean that Bashir could be arrested by international authorities if he left the country.

In Sudan, U.N. agencies and peacekeepers were on alert and had evacuated about 250 nonessential personnel from the country over the last few days.

Andrew Natsios, the former U.S. envoy to Sudan who was one of the first to raise alarms about the attacks in Darfur, said an indictment of Bashir would make it much more difficult to negotiate a settlement with the Sudanese government.

“Who in the U.N. and European Community is going to talk with the Sudanese government now that the head of state has been indicted?” said Natsios, now a professor at Georgetown University. “I don’t think the people in the advocacy groups or the [International Criminal Court] are thinking about the consequences of this. If they have a plan for saving the country from much more bloodshed, I haven’t heard it.”

One key question is whether the controversy will unify Sudan’s ruling elite behind Bashir or create new fissures that could ultimately drive him from power. Hassan Turabi, one of Sudan’s leading opposition figures, predicted that the country’s ruling elite would voice strong public support for the president, but would eventually splinter.

“This will create a lot of trouble inside the inner circle,” Turabi said. “In Sudan, leaders are supposed to rule through awe and terror and intimidation. This is destroying that image. Now people see him as vulnerable.”

In an effort to avoid the same kind of military coup that brought Bashir to power in 1989, Turabi predicted that the president would attempt to soften his international image in the coming months, perhaps even pushing hard for a Darfur peace deal. At the same time, he said, the government would launch a legal and diplomatic offensive to lobby ICC judges and the U.N. Security Council against formally issuing the warrant.

“This will moderate him, whether he likes it or not,” Turabi said. He said that Bashir had convened a meeting Sunday night among leading opposition parties to appeal for their support.

If the warrant pushes Bashir to seek peace in Darfur, he may find it difficult to gather rebel groups at the negotiating table. Rebel leaders said Monday that peace talks are in effect dead as long as Bashir remains in power.

“He’s no longer someone we will deal with,” said Tahir Elfaki, head of the legislative council of the Justice and Equality Movement. His group, he added, “will not talk to a criminal.”

Speaking by satellite phone from Darfur, Elfaki said rebels were preparing to step up their attacks against the government, including another strike against the capital.

“We are going back to finish what we started in May,” Elfaki said, referring to the rebel offensive that reached the outskirts of Khartoum. “If he doesn’t hand himself over, we are coming back to capture him alive and hand him over to the ICC.”

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maggie.farley@latimes.com

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Farley reported from the United Nations and Sanders from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Multiple charges

The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has filed 10 counts against Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir for alleged atrocities in Darfur. They are:

Three counts of genocide for killing members of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, causing those groups serious bodily or mental harm, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

Five counts of crimes against humanity for murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape.

Two counts of war crimes for attacks on civilian populations in Darfur and for pillaging towns and villages.

Source: Associated Press