15 arrested in Sudan, U.S. calls it genocide

Ali Mohamed Osman Hassan, minister of justice of Sudan, told reporters, a government committee had arrested 15 members of the police, military and security forces in Darfur for human rights abuses and they would be sent to court immediately.

Arrested military and security officials are accused of rape, killing and burning villages in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Wednesday on a French-drafted resolution which would send those responsible for war crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a step which Sudan opposes.

Yassin said 14 members of the police, army and security forces were under arrest in West Darfur state and one in North Darfur state, but that the committee had not yet finished work.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a rebellion which has raged in remote Darfur for more than two years. Thousands more die every month in the makeshift camps for the almost two million people who have fled their homes in the region the size of France.

The United States calls the violence genocide. A U.N.-appointed commission stopped short of declaring it genocide but said heinous crimes against humanity had taken place.

The commission gave U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan a sealed list of 51 people it said should be sent to the ICC.

Human rights organizations denounced the Bush administration’s attmept to derail UN Security Council action on the human rights crisis in Darfur region of the Sudan last week.

Human rights activists said that this action gives the appearance that the Bush administration has stronger ideological opposition to the ICC than it does to the crime of genocide.

Former President Clinton signed the treaty just before leaving office in 2001. Since then, the Bush administration has fought to weaken the treaty by pressuring many countries through side treaties to exempt the US from the court’s preview. The administration further threatened to withdraw peacekeeping forces from around the world and to withhold financial support for the UN if the US did not receive an exemption.

Last week, Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said, “The United States is hanging the people of Darfur out to dry by stalling on justice.” According to that international human rights organization, Washington sponsored the resolution that created the UN Inquiry for Darfur, but has ignored the commission’s findings that the ICC is the “single best mechanismâ€? and “only credible wayâ€? to ensure that justice is done in Darfur.

“In the guise of taking action on a peacekeeping force in the North-South conflict, the United States is pushing aside measures needed to deal with atrocities in Darfur,� said Dicker. “Vague commitments to accountability are not enough. The heinous crimes committed in Darfur need immediate investigation and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.�