CAIRO — The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor was to arrive Saturday in Sudan to discuss cooperation with authorities over convening trials for those internationally wanted in war-crime and genocide cases in the country’s Darfur conflict, the Sudanese government said.
Prime Minister Abdallla Hamdok’s office said in a statement that prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other court officials would stay in Sudan until Wednesday. It’s the first announced visit for Bensouda to Sudan.
“The [court] delegation will discuss methods of cooperation between the Government of Sudan and the [court] with regard to the suspects against whom the [court] has issued arrest warrants,” read the statement, which did not name any of the suspects.
Among those wanted by the international court is Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir who has been in jail in Khartoum since his ouster last year and is facing several trials in Sudanese courts related to his three decades of strongman rule and the uprising that helped oust him.
The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region broke out when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community rose up in an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
Al-Bashir’s government responded with a scorched-earth campaign of aerial bombings and unleashed militias known as janjaweed, who are accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.
The international court charged al-Bashir, 76, with war crimes and genocide on accusations that he masterminded the campaign of attacks in Darfur.
Also indicted by the court are two other senior figures of al-Bashir’s rule: Abdel-Ra-him Muhammad Hussein, interior and defense minister during much of the conflict, and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time and later the leader of al-Bashir’s ruling party.
The court also indicted rebel leader Abdulla Banda, whose whereabouts are not known, and janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb, who surrendered to authorities in Central African Republic, Sudan’s neighbor, in June.