"The Sudanese government will not accept any pressure from the ICC," said Rabie Atti, a party spokesperson, noting that Sudan, like the United States, is not a signatory to the court.
Sudanese President Charged With Genocide
By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 14, 2008; 10:48 AM
NAIROBI, Kenya, July 14 -- The chief prosecutor for the Internationals Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir Monday with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for orchestrating a brutal, scorched-earth campaign against particular ethnic groups in Sudan's western Darfur region.
It is the first time the court has charged a sitting head of state.
Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina presented evidence to a three-judge panel that Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three ethnic groups in Darfur that the government viewed as the constituency of rebels who took up arms against the government in 2003.
"Al Bashir failed to defeat the rebels, so he went after the people," read a statement from Ocampo. "His alibi was 'counterinsurgency.' His intent was genocide. . . . He has mobilised the entire state apparatus, including the armed forces, the intelligence services, the diplomatic and public information bureaucracies, and the justice system" to subject the targeted groups "to conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction."
Some experts estimate that at least 400,000 people have died since the Darfur conflict began; the Sudanese government says those numbers are exaggerated.
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