WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2009-03-04 Time: 14:01:11 Posted By: Jan
By Mike Corder
The Hague, Netherlands – The International Criminal Court plans to announce Wednesday whether it will issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of masterminding genocide in Darfur – amid fears it could provoke a violent backlash.
The chief prosecutor says dozens of witnesses will testify that al-Bashir controlled a genocidal campaign aimed at wiping out three ethnic African tribes in the vast nation south of Egypt.
“We have strong evidence against Mr Bashir,” prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said Tuesday. “More than 30 witnesses will (testify) how he managed to control everything and we have strong evidence of his intention.”
An arrest warrant for al-Bashir would be a milestone for the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, which started work in 2002 and has never before ordered the arrest of a sitting head of state.
It would also put him alongside former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and ex-Liberian leader Charles Taylor as heads of state indicted for war crimes while in office. Both of them were forced from power and ended up on trial at international tribunals in The Hague.
Dozens of Darfur is were planning to gather Wednesday outside the court in memory of victims of the conflict, said Sara Tesorieri, a spokesperson for several Darfur groups involved in the action. Similar gatherings were planned in London, Rome and Brussels,
“They will light some candles and read a list of names,” Tesorieri said. “It will be an impromptu memorial.”
In a show of defiance Tuesday, al-Bashir danced for cheering supporters at a rally in northern Sudan. An effigy of Moreno Ocampo was torched.
“They will issue their decision tomorrow, and we are telling them to immerse it in water and drink it,” al-Bashir said, using a common Arabic insult meant to show extreme disrespect.
The war in Darfur began in 2003, when rebel ethnic African groups, complaining of discrimination and neglect, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. UN officials say up to 300 000 people have died and 2,7 million have fled their homes.
In 2005, the Security Council asked Moreno Ocampo to investigate crimes in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Sudan and its allies in the African Union and Arab League have lobbied the Security Council to postpone the case by a year so UN and AU efforts to end the six-year conflict can continue. But disagreement among veto-wielding members makes that unlikely.
The US, France and Britain oppose a delay. Russia and China, which has strong economic ties with Sudan, would likely support one, council diplomats said.
“Certainly, the council is still divided on this issue,” Libya’s acting UN ambassador, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who is the current council president, told a news conference Tuesday. “There is nothing scheduled by the council as an immediate reaction to the decision of the ICC.”
Moreno Ocampo has asked for arrest warrants on 10 charges, including genocide, murder, torture, extermination and rape. He said Sudanese troops and the janjaweed Arab militia they support murdered civilians and continued to prey on them in refugee camps. He says the militia supported has engaged also in a campaign of rape to drive women into the desert, where they die of starvation.
Even if a warrant is issued, questions remain over who would arrest al-Bashir, who seized power in a coup nearly 20 years ago.
Sudanese authorities refuse to turn over suspects and the court has no police force. Thousands of UN and African Union peacekeepers protecting civilians in Darfur and safeguarding peace in Sudan’s semiautonomous south are not authorized to detain him.
A top U.N. official said this week that peacekeepers are prepared for a violent reaction if any warrants are issued.
“I’m sure there will be some crowd movements. There will be some violence,” UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said. – Sapa-AP
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=nw20090304112148120C159845