Sudan has promised to prosecute murder and rape suspects in Darfur but the key perpetrators may not be among those Khartoum plans to put on trial, the prosecutor of a global court said yesterday.
Darfur is the first case the UN Security Council has referred to the new International Criminal Court but Sudan has said it would not extradite anyone. Instead Khartoum announced it would hold its own trials of 160 alleged suspects.
In a report ahead of his first appearance before the Security Council yesterday, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said any Sudanese trial probably would not conflict with an ICC investigation aimed at "prosecuting persons most responsible for crimes."
He said that in Sudan there appeared to be an "absence of criminal proceedings relating to the cases on which the Office of the Prosecutor is likely to focus."
Moreno-Ocampo has received 2,500 items including documents, video footage and interview transcripts as well as a list of 51 suspects, including army and government officials, from a UN-appointed International Commission of Inquiry.
An estimated 180,000 people have died in the Darfur, and 2 million have fled their homes to escape slaughter, pillaging and rape.
