By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU
The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 31, 2007; 4:18 PM
KHARTOUM, Sudan -- The Sudanese can do a better job prosecuting crimes in Darfur than anyone else, Sudan's justice minister said Wednesday, asserting international courts have no valid reason to investigate suspects in the vast area of western Sudan.
Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi spoke as a team from the International Criminal Court was in Khartoum to look into what the United Nations and others describe as war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
"We as a government are willing and able to try all perpetrators of offenses in Darfur, and for this reason the ICC has absolutely no right to assume any jurisdiction," Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told The Associated Press in an interview. He declined to comment on specifics of the international court mission.
Some top Sudanese officials are believed to be on the list of suspects the U.N. Security Council handed to the international court in 2005 for investigation. Many observers believe Khartoum's fierce rejection of a planned U.N. peacekeeping force for Darfur is linked to government fears the peacekeepers would seek out war crime suspects.
At The Hague, where the international court is based, officials said they would not comment on the investigation. But they confirmed that prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo intended to present his first cases to judges in February.
Sudan is not a party to the statute that governs the International Criminal Court, and the court could only intervene if the government was refusing to investigate, al-Mardi said. He said three special courts have been set up in Darfur by the government.
"Our judges are qualified, experienced and impartial," he said. "They've passed sentences of imprisonment and of capital punishment against civilians, and even against the military, for crimes committed in Darfur."
Al-Mardi did not say how many suspects the courts have tried in connection with violence in Darfur. However, Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups say Sudan does little to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur.
For example, the Sudanese judiciary says it received complaints of about 36 rapes in Darfur in 2006, and that eight perpetrators were sentenced to prison. Aid groups working in Darfur say rape is a daily occurrence and that cases last year number in the thousands.
The United Nations says more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made refugees by four years of fighting, rape and plunder in Darfur. The U.N. and others accuse the government of having countered local rebel groups by unleashing militias of Arab nomads known as janjaweed who are accused of atrocities against farmers from the region's ethnic African tribes. Washington has labeled the violence genocide.
"Allegations that the government has been arming or masterminding militias known as the janjaweed are absolutely false," al-Mardi said.
He said armed groups of mostly Arab tribesmen in the region were part of regular army forces, not militia, but conceded that "maybe other people misrepresent themselves by wearing police or army uniforms to commit crimes."
"This is human weakness, it happens everywhere, not just Darfur or Sudan," he said.
Like other top government officials, al-Mardi says the violence in Darfur is not ethnic strife, but stems from rebels exploiting the rivalry between cattle herders and farmers. And he said only local courts can make rulings that will be legitimate in the eyes of the people.
Suleiman Baldo, a Sudan expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based rights group, disagreed. He said the government has armed Arabs in Darfur, creating the conditions that have displaced millions and destroyed the balance of power between tribes and the legitimacy of traditional courts.
"It is criminally disingenuous of the government to say it relies on traditional justice, because its policies have destroyed that system," Baldo said by telephone.
He said the Sudanese judiciary was only going after "foot soldiers" in Darfur, and has shown no sign of investigating the "highest circles of power."
The international court, he said, is mandated to go after high-level offenders.
Some 50 names of suspects were handed over to the international court by the U.N. The names remain secret, but the U.N. has separately imposed sanctions on four individuals suspected of war crimes: a high-ranking government official, a general, a militia chief and one rebel leader.
