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Sudan, Part I: ICC Prosecutor Press Briefing at the UN; CICC Unofficial transcript Media Stakeout Sudanese Ambassador; Repercussions of the CICC Press Briefing at the UN; Op-Eds

21 Sept 2007

Dear all,

Please find below the first of two digests with information on recent
developments related to the International Criminal Court's investigation in
Darfur, Sudan.

This first digest includes excerpts of the ICC Prosecutor’s press briefing
at the UN; the CICC unofficial transcript of the remarks at the UN Media
Stakeout of Sudanese Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad;
repercussions of the CICC press briefing at the UN and opinion articles.

Please also take note of the Coalition's policy on situations before the ICC
(below), which explicitly states that the CICC will not take a position on
potential or pending situations before the court. The Coalition, however,
will continue to provide the most up-to-date information about the ICC.

With regards,

Mariana Rodriguez Pareja
CICC Communications
[email protected]

*****

I. ICC PROSECUTOR LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO’S BRIEFING AT THE UNITED NATIONS;
RESPONSE BY SUDAN

i. Transcript of the ICC Prosecutor’s press briefing on September 20 at UN
Headquarters in New York, to view the transcript see
http://www.coalitionfortheicc.org/documents/NY_sept_20_LMO_press_briefing_speech_eng.pdf
, to view the six minute webcast see http://www.un.org/webcast/2007.html.

“In February I presented evidence unveiling the criminal system implemented
by the former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior Ahmad Harun.
Ahmad Harun recruited Militia/Janjaweed to attack the civilian population of
Darfur and force millions of people into camps.

In April 2007, Judges at the ICC issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Harun and
Militia/Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb for 51 counts of crimes against
humanity and war crimes.

The Government of the Sudan has the duty to arrest and transfer them to The
Hague.

They are denying Ahmad Harun’s crimes. The world cannot share in this
denial.

I am concerned that silence by most States and international organizations
on the subject of the arrest warrants has been understood in Khartoum as a
weakening of international resolve in support of the law and of the arrests.

It’s time to break the silence.

…… As peace talks and negotiations for the deployment of the hybrid force
advance, there is a resurgence of violence around the camps; as the
Secretary-General said. Louise Arbour spoke about it; John Holmes spoke
about it. It looks like chaos, but is not. I have reasons to believe that
it is an operation in which Ahmad Harun plays a key role.

There are also consistent reports that the land and villages the displaced
left behind are being occupied by new settlers, outsiders.

…… World leaders have to understand that if the justice component is
ignored, the crimes will continue, and affect the humanitarian and security
operations.

Ahmad Harun is not protecting the camps; he is controlling them. He must be
stopped; he must be arrested. The international community has to be
consistent in their support of the law.

….. As you know, Darfur will be discussed in a number of High level meetings
in the coming days and weeks.

These upcoming meetings are an opportunity to remind the Government of the
Sudan of its duty to arrest Harun.

There are millions of victims waiting for news on their radios that the
international community is with them and supporting the arrest of Ahmad
Harun.

Justice in Darfur must be on the agenda, at the top of the agenda. In Darfur
today, there can be no political solution, no security solution, no
humanitarian solution as long as Ahmad Harun remains free in the Sudan.”

ii. Transcript of questions and answers at Prosecutor’s UN press briefing,
20 September 2007,
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EGUA-778TJ4?OpenDocument

“…. Responding to questions, the Prosecutor emphasized that there could be
no solution to the problem of Darfur with Mr. Harun in charge of the victims
within the camps. The Government was denying the problem's existence.

He told another questioner that he would prosecute those responsible for the
crimes committed in Darfur according to the evidence collected.

Asked what anybody could realistically do in the face of the Government's
adamant opposition to arresting Mr. Harun, he said International Criminal
Court judges would decide the value of the evidence and the law had to be
respected.

To a suggestion that diplomacy should be pursued, he responded by pointing
out that he was not a diplomat but a prosecutor. The International Criminal
Court had received the referral of the Darfur case from the Security
Council. It was the duty of the Prosecutor to collect the evidence and that
of the judges to decide the law.

Underscoring the importance of a comprehensive solution to the Darfur
problem - including humanitarian help, security, development, political and
justice - he said any such solution must be compatible with the law. The
Office of the Prosecutor was not requesting peacekeepers to arrest anybody
as that was not their mandate. Rather, it was the duty of the Government of
the Sudan to carry out the arrests of those indicted. It knew of Ahmad
Harun's whereabouts.

He noted that the Sudanese Government had set up a National Commission of
Inquiry which had recognized the role of the Janjaweed leader but denied the
involvement of a member of the Government. That had the international
community worried. The commission had said that it had no evidence against
Mr. Harun, and while he could provide it with evidence, he could not provide
it with witnesses, whom he had a duty to protect. Ahmad Harun would see all
the evidence presented against him in The Hague.”

iii. Unofficial transcription by the CICC Secretariat of the informal
comments by the Permanent Representative of Sudan to the United Nations
Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad on 20 September 2007 in response
to the Prosecutor’s press briefing.. You can find full unofficial
transcription at: CICC HYPERLINK MISSING or you can access to the 6 minute
webcast at http://www.un.org/webcast/2007.html

“AMBASSADOR: We are very much concerned about the increasing politization
of Mr. Ocampo’s office. The man came here with one objective which is to
destroy the peace process.

He knows that on the 27 October, only less than a month, in Tripoli, Libya,
there will be a meeting on peace negotiations on Darfur, which is hoped to
be providing lasting peace to Darfur. Rather than mobilizing all resources
and energies to ensure the success of that meeting, he came now to New York
to play the same political game.

The same political game are assigned to him by the enemies of peace in the
Sudan, which is that is to destabalize the country and to spoil the peace
process.

According to the mandate of his office he is supposed to present a report to
SC every 6 months, on the issue of the ICC and Sudan. Regrettably, he used
to come every month to New York, wasting the taxpayers’ money of the
countries parties to the ICC statute and his objective continues to be only
Darfur, Darfur, Darfur.

We really warn against the increasing politization of this office, his
increasing hostility vis-a-vis peace in the Sudan and we would like also the
international community to observe and to monitor what he is doing.

Also he came here to influence the meeting on Darfur tomorrow. To make
(inaudible) build up on Sudan in order that our position in that meeting be
affected negatively. So, Mr. Ocampo is a part, member of the orchestra that
is playing a melody that will definitely entertain some people here in this
organization, but the casualties will be peace, stability and security of
the country.

So we warn Mr. Ocampo again, repetition of this politization, he is doing a
very bad job for his office as well as to peace in Darfur.

QUESTION: What do you think he is doing for the peace process?

ANSWER Because rather than focusing the attention on ensuring success of the
peace process, we want lasting peace, then if there is any justice, it will
follow and through our judicial system. Not The Hague.

[….]

QUESTION: Can you respond that he would like to see Ahmed Harun turned over,
what is your country’s thinking about this…?

ANSWER: We said it to him and we said it to the Secretary General and we
said it to who ever asked us about this. In no way we are going to
surrender any of our citizens to be prosecuted abroad, if there are any
crimes, the place is Sudan and the people to do that is the Sudanese
judicial system. So we informed him, he knows it, but he is unfortunately
playing a very bad political game here.

QUESTION: You mentioned the melody he is playing. …. who is the secret
conductor?

ANSWER: Yeah, yeah… he is part of the orchestra that is… (laugh) You know
it? You know them?! You know the conductors and producers also of the
melody. He is part of that orchestra, I am sure the melody he producing now
will entertain some here in this organization, but the casualties will be
peace in the Sudan, and peace in Darfur.”

[Please note: This is an unofficial transcription, and should not be quoted
in any official document.]

VI. CICC UN PRESS BRIEFING

“Coalition For International Criminal Court To Hold Press Conference On
Darfur War Crimes,” US Fed News, 20 September 2007,
http://www.nieuwsbank.nl/en/2007/09/21/v022.htm

“A day before Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon and African Union Commission
Chair Alpha Oumar Konaré was due to hold a high-level meeting on the path to
peace in strife-torn Darfur, human rights activists urged the leaders to
break their silence on the two men charged by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) with committing war crimes in the Western region of the Sudan -
an issue not on the agenda of the talks.

‘The ICC has been noticeably absent from the discussion on Darfur and as a
result, justice has been sidelined,’ said Tanya Karanasios, programme
Director of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court as she opened
a Headquarters press briefing by a diverse panel of civil society actors.
Noting that Security Council resolution 1593 (2005) had called on Khartoum
to cooperate with the Court, she urged the United Nations, the African Union
and the wider international community to ‘step up and meet their
obligations.’

Niemat Ahmadi, a native of North Darfur, said that the ‘war crimes’,
‘genocide’, - whatever the atrocities committed in her homeland since 2003
were called - was continuing with impunity. The lack of pressure to bring
accused criminals before the Court had emboldened the Government to
virtually ignore what was going on. There must be accountability for mass
killings, rape and destruction of countless villages, said Ms. Ahmadi, who
is a founding member of the Darfuri Leaders Network.

She said that Harun's appointment had sent a ‘damaging message’ that those
committing crimes in Darfur would not be held accountable. It had also
humiliated the people of the region, sending them the message that rights
abusers could do whatever they wanted in their homeland. Among other
troubling signs, she said that the Khartoum Government was relocating people
of Arab descent to the Darfur region and giving them automatic citizenship,
and that gender based violence was also on the rise.

…Calling strongly on the African Union to get behind the Court and its
Prosecutor, Dismas Nkunda, Co-Director of the International Refugee Rights
Initiative and co-Chair of the Darfur Consortium, said that regional body -
and African leaders - were skirting this issue of accountability and
justice. Even though it had been the only organization working in the region
since the beginning of the conflict, the African Union had been strangely
silent on the issue.

‘The African Union has a duty, for the benefit of all African people and the
people of the world, to see justice done,’ he said. Stressing that Africa
was on record as having the most states parties to the Court's founding Rome
Statute, he admitted that he was confounded and dismayed by Africa's
response. ….

Responding to questions, he said that ‘those criminals [charged by the
Court] should be sitting in a prison cell in The Hague.’ Justice and
accountability were an absolute necessity to ensure lasting peace in Darfur.
If the Chair of the African Union travelled to the Sudan again, stood in the
Presidential palace and said nothing about justice or suggested that justice
be deferred, ‘it is a slap in the face to the entire continent,’ If that
ended up being the case, ‘We will feel, Mr. Konaré, that you have let us
down as a continent.’

Ahead of the talks convened by the Secretary-General and other political
initiatives on the Darfur crisis, expected to be discussed when world
leaders converge on New York next week for the General Assembly's annual
general debate, Sara Dareshori, Senior Council in the International Justice
Programme of Human Rights Watch, said that what was said or not said about
justice in the coming days would send an important message to Khartoum about
the international community's commitment to the Court….”

V. OPINION ARTICLES

“Editorial: Mocking the Powerless and the Powerful,” New York Times, 21
September 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/opinion/21fri2.html

“A trail of blood leads from the genocide in Darfur back to the highest
levels of government in Khartoum. So Sudan’s announcement earlier this month
that it would form its own committee to investigate human rights violations
in Darfur never inspired tremendous hope. Khartoum’s choice to lead the
committee, however, was even more cynical than we could have imagined and a
deliberate slap in the face to the United Nations and the International
Criminal Court.

Ahmad Harun — whose appointment was announced while the United Nations
secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, was in Sudan for talks on the crisis — is
one of only two people the court has charged so far with war crimes and
crimes against humanity in Darfur.

As Sudan’s interior minister from 2003 to 2005, Mr. Harun recruited, funded
and armed the janjaweed militias, who murdered at least 200,000 people and
drove 2.5 million more from their homes. Now, as minister of humanitarian
affairs, he controls the fate of the survivors. He decides when and where
aid organizations can go, and some of these international agencies, on whom
hundreds of thousands of refugees depend for their survival, have accused
Mr. Harun of blocking their work.

The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Mr. Harun’s arrest in
the spring, but Sudan denied its jurisdiction and refused to cooperate. The
international community must not accept this. Today, more than 25 countries
will meet at the United Nations to discuss the crisis in Darfur. Britain and
France in particular — as members of both the Security Council and
signatories of the criminal court treaty — should demand that Sudan arrest
Mr. Harun and surrender him to The Hague. The United States should join
them….”

*********
CICC's policy on the referral and prosecution of situations before the ICC:

The Coalition for the ICC is not an organ of the court. The CICC is an
independent NGO movement dedicated to the establishment of the International
Criminal Court as a fair, effective, and independent international
organization.
The Coalition will continue to provide the most up-to-date information about
the ICC and to help coordinate global action to effectively implement the
Rome Statute of the ICC. The Coalition will also endeavor to respond to
basic queries and to raise Awareness about the ICC's trigger mechanisms and
procedures, as they develop. The Coalition as a whole, and its secretariat,
do not endorse or promote specific investigations or prosecutions or take a
position on Situations before the ICC. However, individual CICC members may
endorse referrals, provide legal and other support on investigations, or
develop partnerships with local and other organizations in the course of
their efforts.

Communications to the ICC can be sent to:
ICC
P.O. box 19519
2500 CM the Hague
The Netherlands