Will the ICC seek prosecutions in Sudan following Darfur hospital attack?

Special Will the ICC seek prosecutions in Sudan following Darfur hospital attack?
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Sudanese refugees who have fled from the war in Sudan get off a truck loaded with families arriving at a Transit Centre for refugees in Renk, on February 13, 2024. More than 550,000 people have now fled from the war in Sudan to South Sudan since the conflict exploded in April 2023, according to the United Nations. (AFP/File)
Special Will the ICC seek prosecutions in Sudan following Darfur hospital attack?
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Sudanese refugees who have fled from the war in Sudan get off a truck loaded with families arriving at a Transit Centre for refugees in Renk, on February 13, 2024. More than 550,000 people have now fled from the war in Sudan to South Sudan since the conflict exploded in April 2023, according to the United Nations. (AFP/File)
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Updated 20 June 2024
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Will the ICC seek prosecutions in Sudan following Darfur hospital attack?

Will the ICC seek prosecutions in Sudan following Darfur hospital attack?
  • International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor is ‘concerned by the ethnically motivated nature’ of the conflict
  • Fourteen months into the conflict, legal experts have criticized the court’s belated appeal for evidence of atrocities

LONDON: The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has appealed for evidence of atrocities in Sudan, saying his ongoing investigation “seems to disclose an organized, systematic and a profound attack on human dignity.”

However, legal experts who spoke to Arab News have accused the ICC of dragging its feet on the deteriorating situation in Sudan and of focusing too narrowly on the Darfur region while neglecting the wider conflict.

Khan last week said he had become “particularly concerned by the ethnically motivated nature” of the conflict in Sudan after combatants reportedly attacked the main hospital in Al-Fasher, North Darfur, in what likely constituted a war crime.




El-Fasher South Hospital in Al-Fasher, North Darfur, after it was attacked. (X: Twitter)

Doctors from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres confirmed to Arab News that the attack on the South Hospital on June 8 had forced MSF and its partners in the Sudanese Ministry of Health to suspend all activities and withdraw staff from the facility.

A spokesperson said authorities had already reduced services at the hospital, with many patients having been transferred before the attack owing to the uptick in fighting around the city — the last in Darfur still under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Fighters affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a breakaway military faction that has seized control of swathes of the country since the conflict began on April 15, 2023, were accused of mounting the attack.




Members of Sudan's paramilitary group known as RSS were accused of burning villages in some parts of the country. (AFP/File)

“It’s outrageous that the RSF opened fire inside the hospital,” Michel Lacharite, head of emergencies at MSF, told Arab News. “It is not an isolated incident. Staff and patients have endured attacks on the facility for weeks from all sides, but opening fire inside a hospital crosses a line.

“Warring parties must stop attacking hospitals. One by one, hospitals are damaged and closed. Remaining facilities in Al-Fasher aren’t prepared for mass casualties, we are trying to find solutions, but the responsibility lies with warring parties to spare medical facilities.”

INNUMBERS

• 14,000 Estimated number of people killed in Sudan since the conflict began on April 15, 2023.

• 10 million People displaced, including over 2 million who have crossed into neighboring countries.

The RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, has previously denied claims that its forces attack civilian infrastructure.

While details about the hospital attack remain sketchy, the MSF spokesperson said “most patients” and “all MSF staff” were able to escape.




Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (C), known as Hemeti, commander of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, has denied accusations that his group were committing war crimes. (AFP/File)

As the main referral hospital for treating Al-Fasher’s war-wounded, the only one equipped to manage mass casualty events and one of just two with surgical capacity, the loss of services will have a major impact. In less than a month, the facility had treated some 1,300 people.

The UN Security Council adopted a UK-drafted resolution on June 14 demanding an end to the siege of Al-Fasher.

The measure expressed “grave concern” over the spreading violence and reports that the RSF was carrying out “ethnically motivated violence.”

During the meeting, Mohamed Abushahab, the UAE’s ambassador to the UN, said: “We believe that the Sudanese people deserve justice and peace. They need a ceasefire, a credible political process and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid.”

Rebutting accusations made by the representative of Sudan’s SAF-backed government, he said: “Excuses and finger pointing only prolongs the suffering of civilians.”

Independent ivestigations using videos suggest recent SAF victories were enabled by the deployment of such Iranian-made combat drones as Mohajer-6 and Zajil-3.




A handout picture provided by the Iranian presidency on April 18, 2022 shows an Iranian combat drone on display during a military parade in Tehran. Independent investigations using videos suggest recent SAF victories were enabled by the deployment of such Iranian-made combat drones. (AFP/File)

According to Wim Zwijnenburg, a drone expert and head of the Humanitarian Disarmament Project at Dutch peace organisation PAX, the videos are “an indication of active Iranian support” for SAF.

“If these drones are equipped with guided munitions, it means they were supplied by Iran because those munitions are not produced in Sudan,” Zwijnenburg told BBC.

Sudan’s SAF-dominated governing council has denied acquiring weapons from Iran.

Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow for the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that although the Al-Fasher hospital assault has been a wake-up call for the ICC, attacks of this kind were “nothing new.”

“The fact of the matter is that this is not the first hospital to be looted or destroyed in this conflict,” Hudson told Arab News.




Fire rages in a livestock market area in al-Fasher, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur state, on September 1, 2023, in the aftermath of bombardment by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP/File)

“It is a conflict that has been raging for 14 months and has been fought in much the same way with this attack well within the nature of the conflict.

“What is new is that Sudan’s civilian population’s ability to withstand the shocks of this war has depleted. But while it may feel like a game-changing moment, it is not.”

Referring to the July 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys during the Bosnian War, Hudson said: “Maybe if there was a Srebrenica moment, a move to extermination, that would be game-changing.”

Khan’s comments indicate the ICC has been paying attention to the situation in Sudan. However, Hudson voiced disappointment at the court’s slow response to the conflict.

Contrasting the “alacrity” with which the ICC acted against Russia for its war in Ukraine and Israel for its assault on Gaza, he said it was telling of Sudan’s ranking in international priorities that the court was “only now” investigating.




International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Karim Khan (L) visits the Kalma camp for internally displaced people in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on August 21, 2022. (AFP/File)

“Khan’s comments strike me as an admission that the court has not moved at pace and should have been doing more,” said Hudson. “I am not sure what restraints he is operating under but he’s not prioritized Sudan, and, in Darfur, these cases build themselves.

“It is not just the court, this conflict has been neglected more broadly, there need to be moves to build a diplomatic process and to get humanitarian aid because only eight percent of a global appeal has been met, which is shockingly low.

“I would like to see an increase in the cost on this war’s actors as part of a move to bring it to an end, including the use of sanctions, which have not been deployed efficiently, and could have a part to play in bringing actors to the negotiating table.”

Although efforts at brokering a ceasefire between the two sides have so far failed, Saudi aid agency KSrelief has been rolling out health projects intended to support Sudan’s civilian population, with three projects put into action in the last week alone.




Sudanese villagers receive humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia at a KSrelief center in Khartoum, Sudan. (SPA/File)

With thousands of civilians reportedly killed and thousands more displaced by the fighting across Darfur, the ICC’s machinery has swung into action. Even so, Sudanese international lawyers have expressed skepticism.

One who spoke to Arab News on the condition of anonymity said they were particularly concerned by Khan’s focus on the violence in Darfur when in reality, the violence has spread far beyond the troubled western region.

“The ICC was mandated to investigate crimes in Darfur in 2005, and we have not yet seen any results from that mandate, and now this conflict is happening in other areas,” the lawyer said. “This violence is not all in — nor is it originating from — Darfur.

“What is happening outside Darfur is not lesser than the violence happening within it and yet the ICC, partly as a consequence of Sudan not being a party to the court’s jurisdiction, is drawing attention away from this and making it all about Darfur.”

Despite lacking jurisdiction as a consequence of the Sudanese government failing to ratify the ICC treaty, otherwise known as the Rome Statute, the court had gained jurisdiction for a limited investigation into earlier crimes in Darfur through a UN Security Council referral.

That referral resulted in the ICC’s 2009 decision to issue an arrest warrant for the since-ousted Sudanese President Omar Bashir for multiple charges, including for a genocide that took place in Darfur between 2003 and 2008.




Sudan's former strongman Omar Bashir (left) was the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the ICC over genocide charges committed in Darfur between 2003 and 2008 allegedly by the RSF led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (right)

Born out of Arab militias commonly known as Janjaweed, the RSF was mobilized by Bashir against non-Arab tribes in Darfur. At the time, they were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities, and Darfur became synonymous with genocide.

Welcoming Khan’s push for evidence, another Sudan-based legal expert, who spoke to Arab News anonymously, challenged those questioning the focus on Darfur, stressing it made sense given the region’s history.

“Does it make sense to keep looking at cases within the Darfur geographic region? Yes, because all that is happening in Sudan from 2003 up to now can be connected back to Darfur, as that is where this conflict’s root causes lie,” they said.

“There are questions to be asked though in relation to how the ICC is addressing the Darfur case and the role that this, and the coverage of it, will have around the protection of civilians as what is needed is to reduce that risk.”




Internally displaced women wait to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP/File)

The war in Sudan has cost the lives of more than 14,000 people and left thousands more wounded while pushing the population to the brink of famine.

The UN warned the warring parties last month that there is a serious risk of widespread starvation in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan if they do not allow humanitarian aid into the region.

The war has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis as more than 10 million people have been forced to flee their homes, including over 2 million people who have crossed into neighboring countries.

Saudi Arabia has played a central role in facilitating talks between the two warring factions, urging them to meet their obligations to protect civilians under both the Jeddah Declaration and the requirements of international humanitarian law.
 

 


Syrian president says elections could take up to five years

Syrian president says elections could take up to five years
Updated 3 sec ago
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Syrian president says elections could take up to five years

Syrian president says elections could take up to five years
  • Syrian president said infrastructure for the vote needs rebuilding
  • A transitional government has been installed to steer Syria until March 1

DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic President Ahmed Al-Sharaa said Monday that organizing elections could take up to five years, the week after he was appointed interim president and less than two months after ousting Bashar Assad.
“My estimate is that the period of time will be approximately between four and five years until the elections,” Sharaa said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on a private Syrian television channel.
In late December, he told Al Arabiya TV the election process could take four years.
The infrastructure for the vote “needs to be re-established, and this takes time,” Sharaa added on Monday.
He also promised “a law regulating political parties,” adding that Syria would be “a republic with a parliament and an executive government.”
Military commanders last Wednesday appointed Sharaa interim president, after opposition factions toppled Assad on December 8, ending more than five decades of the family’s iron-fisted rule.
Sharaa’s appointment has been welcomed by key regional players Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia.
Sharaa was also tasked with forming an interim legislature, and the Assad-era parliament was dissolved, along with the Baath party, which ruled Syria for decades.
Syria’s constitution was also repealed, and the Assad-era army and security forces were dissolved, as were armed groups, including Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
A transitional government has been installed to steer Syria until March 1.


Russia tells Hamas to ‘keep promises’ on hostage release

Supporters of Israeli hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks hold images of the Bibas family.
Supporters of Israeli hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks hold images of the Bibas family.
Updated 8 min 45 sec ago
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Russia tells Hamas to ‘keep promises’ on hostage release

Supporters of Israeli hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks hold images of the Bibas family.
  • Russia has called for the release of dual Russian-Israeli citizen Alexander Trufanov and Maxim Herkin, an Israeli man from Donbas area of Ukraine with Russian relatives

MOSCOW: A deputy Russian foreign minister met Monday with a senior Hamas official in Moscow and urged Hamas to keep “promises” to release a Russian hostage, the ministry said.
Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on the Middle East, met with Musa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau.
Russia has called for the release of dual Russian-Israeli citizen Alexander Trufanov and Maxim Herkin, an Israeli man from the Donbas area of Ukraine with Russian relatives.
At their talks, Bogdanov “again placed particular stress on the necessity of carrying out the promises given by Hamas’s leadership on releasing from imprisonment Russian citizen Trufanov and other hostages,” the ministry said.
Trufanov, known as Sasha, was abducted on October 7, 2023, with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
His father was killed in the attack and his mother and grandmother were abducted and released in November 2023. The family had emigrated to Israel from Russia in the late 1990s.
Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas, published undated clips of Trufanov in November 2024.
Herkin emigrated to Israel from Ukraine with his mother and was taken from the Supernova rave music festival.
Marzuk told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency Monday that “Trufanov will definitely be released in the near future. He will be released despite the fact that he is a soldier but the decision was taken to release him in the first stage of the deal.”
“That is our answering gesture to Russia’s position on the Palestinian question,” Marzuk was quoted as saying in translated comments.
Talks on releasing Herkin will be held at a “second stage,” he added.
The Russian ministry said the two also discussed “the progress of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, with the stress on the importance of increasing humanitarian aid to the suffering Palestinian population.”


Gaza’s reunited twins speak of loss and joy

Palestinian twins Mahmoud and Ibrahim Al-Atout sit amidst the rubble of their destroyed house after being reunited, in Jabalia.
Palestinian twins Mahmoud and Ibrahim Al-Atout sit amidst the rubble of their destroyed house after being reunited, in Jabalia.
Updated 35 min 29 sec ago
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Gaza’s reunited twins speak of loss and joy

Palestinian twins Mahmoud and Ibrahim Al-Atout sit amidst the rubble of their destroyed house after being reunited, in Jabalia.
  • The two men, from the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, were split up early in the conflict that began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023

GAZA: The emotional reunion of twin brothers in Gaza after Israel allowed movement within the enclave as part of a ceasefire deal provided a visceral image of Palestinian survival after 15 gruelling months of death, separation and destruction.
Video of the twins’ ecstatic, tearful embrace amid the crowds of people trekking home a week ago from displacement camps was widely viewed around the world. But Ibrahim and Mahmoud Al-Atout had both endured loss and hardship that tinged the joy of their reunion.
“I didn’t want to let go of him. It’s like the soul returned to the chest, the soul returned to the heart,” said one of the 30-year-old twins, Mahmoud, speaking about their experience days later in a video obtained by Reuters.

Opinion

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The two men, from the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, were split up early in the conflict that began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing about 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and levelled much of the enclave.
Early on, Israel ordered civilians to leave the north, where its military operations were most intense, but not everybody did so. Those who did travel south were barred from returning until last week as part of the deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
Ibrahim had ended up in the south, while Mahmoud stayed in the north.
When news came late one night that he could go back to Jabalia, Ibrahim phoned Mahmoud, who quickly dressed and rushed to a meeting point on a main road into northern Gaza.
“Imagine: I stood on my feet for six hours, standing around looking like this (and wondering) ‘where is Ibrahim? Where is Ibrahim?,’” said Mahmoud in the video obtained by Reuters.
People coming up from the south kept mistaking him for his brother, Mahmoud said, surprised he had come north so quickly. They then would tell him to wait longer because Ibrahim was traveling with his six young daughters and had to go slowly.
“He called out to me ‘Mahmoud’, and I couldn’t comprehend. I ran quickly and we hugged each other,” he said, describing their moment of reunion.
Together again
Now reunited, the two men and their families say they spend time picking through the ruins of their family home, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023 that killed one of Ibrahim’s daughters and injured another in her head and legs.
Palestinians accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombardment. Israel says Hamas hides among the civilian population and it tries to hit the group while minimizing harm to civilians.
Ibrahim had not wanted to go south. But Israeli forces had moved toward north Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital while he was there with his family and the Red Crescent moved them all to a bigger hospital in the south where better treatment was available.
As each man spoke in the video obtained by Reuters, using big arm movements to illustrate their points, the other sat still and quiet, taking it in.
Things were hard for Ibrahim and his family in the south without home or possessions, and communications were cut off for about four months.
“I was devastated to the point where I lost weight,” said Mahmoud of that time.
Together again, they sat in the evening with a fire by the rubble of their home, cooking bread on a metal shelf, their small children gazing at them with delight.


Emir of Kuwait receives BlackRock CEO

Emir of Kuwait receives BlackRock CEO
Updated 03 February 2025
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Emir of Kuwait receives BlackRock CEO

Emir of Kuwait receives BlackRock CEO
  • Larry Fink highlights importance of collaborating with Kuwait

LONDON: Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, received Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, in the presence of Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.

Fink and his accompanying delegation were received at Bayan Palace on Monday, the Kuwait News Agency reported.

During the meeting, Sheikh Meshal highlighted the importance of fostering investment in Kuwait and enhancing cooperation with foreign companies.

He highlighted the significance of attracting capital to support the national economy and create job opportunities for youth to advance the country’s development.

Fink, the CEO of the US-based multinational investment company established in 1988, highlighted the importance of enhancing collaboration with Kuwait and supporting the country’s Vision 2035.

Minister of Finance Noora Al-Fassam and the Director-General of the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority Sheikh Meshaal Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah attended the meeting.


Oman to host Indian Ocean conference on Feb. 16

Oman to host Indian Ocean conference on Feb. 16
Updated 03 February 2025
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Oman to host Indian Ocean conference on Feb. 16

Oman to host Indian Ocean conference on Feb. 16
  • Omani FM says event is a key platform for discussing the sea economy, ocean governance
  • It is expected to attract people from more than 60 countries

LONDON: The Omani Foreign Ministry will host the 18th Indian Ocean Conference on Feb. 16 to discuss maritime security and trade issues.

The two-day conference will be held under the theme “Voyage to New Horizons of Maritime Partnership,” the ministry said, highlighting Muscat’s commitment to enhancing maritime security and sustainable freight shipping, as well as developing international cooperation.

Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al-Busaidi said that the conference is a key platform for discussing the sea economy and ocean governance.

The event is expected to attract people from more than 60 countries to discuss maritime partnerships, including trade links, maritime security, freedom of navigation, and the use of modern technology to enhance port security and control.

It aims to improve regional cooperation and tackle the challenges confronting the Indian Ocean region, the Oman News Agency reported.