UN turned evidences to ICC – more protests from Sudanese

Nine boxes of documents gathered last year by a special UN commission were turned over to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday. Against which tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through the capital Khartoum on Tuesday.

It contained evidences about atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region. These were driven overnight from Geneva to the fledgling court in The Hague. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was to receive a sealed list of 51 suspects from UN secretary general Kofi Annan in New York later Tuesday.
Moreno-Ocampo’s deputy in The Hague said, prosecutors will analyse the UN evidence and decide if the case falls within the court’s jurisdiction and merits a formal investigation.

The Sudanese government and the ruling National Congress Party had rejected the U.N. resolution vowing not to hand over any Sudanese for trial outside Sudan.

Sudan riot police Tuesday clashed with demonstrators protesting a U.N. Security Council decision to refer Darfur war criminals to the international court.

Police used tear gas, clubs and water hoses to disperse the angry crowd, which tried to storm the U.S. embassy in Khartoum shouting accusations Washington was behind the U.N. resolution.

Police prevented the protesters from approaching the embassy building, cordoning off the area and blocking all roads leading to it. A clash ensued in which several people were injured.

Chanting slogans denouncing the United Nations and the United States, angry protesters stopped at the U.N. building, then the British embassy and finally the U.S. embassy, where they shouted: “Down, down, USA.”

At the U.N. building, they called Secretary-General Kofi Annan a coward and an American agent.

The U.N. Security Council voted 11-0 last Thursday to refer alleged war crimes committed during more than two years of rebellion in the remote Darfur region to the international court in The Hague.
But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on Saturday that Sudan would not allow any Sudanese to be tried in courts outside the country. Other leaders and political groups close to the government have taken the same position.

One of the demonstrators, interior decorator Ibrahim Saleh, said: “We refuse to have any Sudanese citizen tried outside the country. This is neocolonialism.”

The U.N. says Sudan has done little to disarm the Arab militia accused of widespread rape, killing and burning of non-Arab villages in Darfur during a two-year rebel uprising.

More than two million people have fled their homes and tens of thousands have been killed in the Darfur fighting.

The ICC’s deputy prosecutor Serge Brammertz said Tuesday prosecutors would not necessarily follow the UN’s findings either in terms of suspects or crimes to be prosecuted.

He said it was too early to say when a formal investigation would begin and that he hoped the Sudanese government would co-operate with prosecutors.