Region | Sudan
'I will never deal with ICC court'
sudan president al bashir says his government will not recognise legality of indictment
- AP
- Published: 00:04 August 1, 2008
Khartoum: President Omar Al Bashir said in an interview published on Thursday said he will never deal with or appear before the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor has indicted him on charges of genocide and war crimes in Sudan's remote Darfur region.
Al Bashir's comments to the Khartoum independent Al Ayyam daily were his first to directly address the July 14 indictment and how he planned to deal with it. He said a team of legal experts will challenge the indictment's legality and the evidence it contains before the UN.
Security Council and the International Court of Justice. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has also asked the Hague-based court for an arrest warrant for Al Bashir, but it may be weeks before a ruling is made on the request.
The United Nations estimates that up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million displaced in the Darfur conflict since it began in 2003 when ethnic Africans took up arms against the mainly Arab government to press demands for more state funds and services.
Sudan has in the past consistently rejected the ICC's jurisdiction on the grounds it is not a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statue that set up the court. Last year, it refused to hand over two Sudanese nationals indicted on charges of crimes against humanity. But this is the first time an indictment was issued by the ICC against a sitting head of state.
Al Bashir's government has been looking into ways to deal with the indictment. "The government will never deal with the court. It doesn't recognise it, and will not appear before it," Al Bashir was quoted as saying.
"No one knows where [the prosecutor] got [his findings] from. So, we are using a number of legal experts to challenge the legitimacy and legality of the memo [indictment]," he said, adding that no Sudanese defence team will travel to the Hague to argue Al Bashir's case before the court.
Al Bashir also said Sudan would not object to regional bodies taking up its case with the ICC.
The Arab League and the African Union already have asked the UN Security Council to suspend the case for 12 months, something that only that UN body can do under the ICC statue.
Al Bashir also lashed out in the interview at a UN Security Council resolution that referred the Darfur crisis to the ICC in 2005, describing the move as "biased" and "illegal." He said Sudan will only deal with the International Court of Justice, also based in the Hague, because it is part of the UN, of which his country is a member.
Al Bashir, who has led an Islamist regime in Sudan since he seized power in a 1989 military coup, repeated charges that the indictment was part of what he said was a "historic plot" to destabilise Sudan and break it up into smaller entities.
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