The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, arrived in Sudanindicated this Sunday a state media of this African country mired in a continuous crisis since the 2019 overthrow of its leader, accused of genocide.
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“The ICC prosecutor, accompanied by a delegation, will hold meetings with senior officials and will visit the Darfur region,” the SUNA agency said late on Saturday. During the meetings, the jurist will evaluate the evolution of the case against Omar al Bashir, former Sudanese president, accused of genocide.
The visit is scheduled until August 25and it is the third of a prosecutor of the
ICC to Sudan since al Bashir who was ousted from power in 2019.
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Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, held talks in Sudan in May 2021 that opened the door to the possibility of prosecuting former Sudanese leaders for war crimes in The Hague.
Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, was devastated by a civil war that began in 2003. between the Arab-majority regime of Omar al-Bashir and insurgents from local ethnic minorities, who reported discrimination.
Al Bashir sent the armed militia of the Janjawid to crush the rebellion. In 2019 he was overthrown and jailed, and is under ICC arrest warrant, like other leaders of his regime, for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” in Darfur.
In April, a former Janjawid militia commander, Ali Muhamad Ali Abd al-Rahman, appeared in The Hague for the first ICC war crimes trial in Darfur. According to the United Nations, 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced during the Darfur conflict.
In 2020, Sudan signed a peace agreement with various rebel groups, some of them from Darfur, with the aim of ending the conflict in the region. Since then, several former insurgent leaders have assumed high positions in the government.
Al Bashir, convicted of corruption in December 2019, is in Kober prison in Khartoumand is being tried in parallel for his role in the coup that brought him to power in 1989.
The country remains in a deep economic and political crisis since the coup by General Abdel Fatah al-Burhan on October 25 last. The coup derailed the fragile democratic transition established after the fall of Omar al Bashir.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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