KHARTOUM: Rights groups pushed Wednesday for the swift handover of Omar Al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court after Sudan’s new authorities pledged to bring the ousted strongman to justice for alleged war crimes in Darfur.
Top Sudanese officials said Tuesday that the country’s new rulers had agreed with rebel groups to send Bashir and three former aides to The Hague-based court for their role in the conflict in the western Darfur region.
“The Sudanese authorities should translate these words into action and immediately transfer Al-Bashir and other individuals (facing ICC arrest warrants) to The Hague,” Amnesty International acting secretary general Julie Verhaar said.
“Omar Al-Bashir is wanted by the ICC over the murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape of hundreds of thousands of people during the conflict in Darfur.
“A decision to hand him over to the court would be a welcome step toward justice for victims and their families.”
The conflict in Darfur, a region the size of France, erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Bashir’s then Arab-dominated government, accusing it of economic and political marginalization.
The ICC has charged Bashir with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict.
Bashir, who is detained in Sudan after being convicted of corruption, denies the allegations and evaded arrest for more than a decade, traveling overseas in open defiance of the ICC.
The court has also indicted three of his former aides, Ahmed Haroon, Abdulrahim Mohamed Hussain and Ali Kushied.
Bashir and the three others wanted by the ICC “have to go there,” Mohamed Hassan Al-Taishay, a member of Sudan’s new ruling sovereign council, said on Tuesday.
“We agreed that we fully supported the ICC and we agreed... that the four criminals have to be handed over,” Taishay said in the South Sudanese capital Juba where a government delegation was meeting rebel groups from Darfur.
He did not specify when they would be transferred to The Hague.
Rights groups alleged widespread abuses have taken place in Darfur, where the United Nations says about 300,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict began.
“Sudanese security forces’ widespread attacks on civilians under Bashir’s campaign of terror, including pervasive sexual violence as a weapon of war, have had devastating impacts on the lives and livelihoods of their victims,” US-based NGO Physicians for Human Rights said in a statement.
“It is beyond time that his victims and their families receive justice.”
Taishay said that the Juba talks, still ongoing, focused on justice and reconciliation in Darfur.
He said they had agreed several mechanisms for achieving peace, including the establishment of a special court to investigate crimes in the region.
Sudanese government spokesman Faisal Mohamed Salih also said that the four accused would face the ICC.
“Bashir and others will be presented to the ICC court. This is a government decision,” Salih told AFP.
Bashir was ousted by the army in a palace coup last April after months of protests against his three decades of iron-fisted rule.
He was arrested and later sentenced to two years in a detention center on corruption charges.
Anti-Bashir protesters, residents of Darfur and rebel groups from the region have consistently demanded that the former ruler be handed over to the ICC.
Years of conflict in Darfur and other regions and the secession of South Sudan in 2011 left the country’s economy in a shambles — the key factor for nationwide protests against Bashir last year.
Ten months after his ouster, acute shortages of bread, fuel and foreign currency continue to hamper Sudan’s economic revival.
“It’s been more than an hour I’m standing in a queue for bread,” said government employee Mahasien Ahmed, one of dozens waiting outside a bakery in north Khartoum.
Long queues of vehicles were also seen outside fuel stations across Khartoum.
“Every family is divided these days in a way,” said Hassan Ahmed, a private sector employee waiting to fill his car at a fuel station.
“Some members are standing in a queue for bread, some for fuel and others for cooking gas. We are suffering a lot.”
Rights groups want swift hand over of Sudan’s Bashir to ICC
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Rights groups want swift hand over of Sudan’s Bashir to ICC
- Top Sudanese officials said Tuesday that the country’s new rulers had agreed with rebel groups to send Bashir and three former aides to the ICC
- The ICC has charged Bashir with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict
Gaza’s Islamic Jihad says Israeli hostage tried to take own life
- One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying
DUBAI: An Israeli hostage held by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group has tried to take his own life, the spokesperson for the movement’s armed wing said in a video posted on Telegram on Thursday.
One of the group’s medical teams intervened and prevented him from dying, the Al Quds Brigades spokesperson added, without going into any more detail on the hostage’s identity or current condition.
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Militants led by Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement killed 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage in an attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas ally Islamic Jihad also took part in the assault.
The military campaign that Israel launched in response has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the coastal enclave.
Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Hamza said the hostage had tried to take his own life three days ago due to his psychological state, without going into more details.
Abu Hamza accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of setting new conditions that had led to “the failure and delay” of negotiations for the hostage’s release.
The man had been scheduled to be released with other hostages under the conditions of the first stage of an exchange deal with Israel, Abu Hamza said. He did not specify when the man had been scheduled to be released or under which deal.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire in Gaza, under a possible deal that would also see the release of Israeli hostages in return for the freedom of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Islamic Jihad’s armed wing had issued a decision to tighten the security and safety measures for the hostages, Abu Hamza added.
In July, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said some Israeli hostages had tried to kill themselves after it started treating them in what it said was the same way that Israel treated Palestinian prisoners.
“We will keep treating Israeli hostages the same way Israel treats our prisoners,” Abu Hamza said at that time. Israel has dismissed accusations that it mistreats Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli airstrikes kill at least 16 in southern Gaza
At least 16 Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to medics.
One strike targeted the Hamas-run interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis, killing six people. Another airstrike hit a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, a designated humanitarian zone for displaced civilians, killing at least 10 people, including women and children, and injuring 15 others.
Among the dead in the Al-Mawasi strike were Mahmoud Salah, Gaza's police chief, and his aide Hussam Shahwan, the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry. The ministry condemned the attack, accusing Israel of seeking to deepen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Israeli military described the strike in Al-Mawasi as intelligence-based, targeting Shahwan but did not acknowledge Salah's death.
The Gaza health ministry reports over 45,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, with most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced and large portions of the territory in ruins. The conflict, now in its 15th month, began after Hamas’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being taken to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
27 migrants die off Tunisia, 83 rescued, in shipwrecks: civil defence
TUNIS: Twenty-seven migrants, including women and children, died after two boats capsized off central Tunisia, with 83 people rescued, a civil defense official told AFP on Thursday.
The rescued and dead passengers, who were found off the Kerkennah Islands off central Tunisia, were aiming to reach Europe and were all from sub-Saharan African countries, said Zied Sdiri, head of civil defense in the city of Sfax.
Searches were still underway for other possible missing passengers, according to the Tunisian National Guard, which oversees the coast guard.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe with Italy, whose island of Lampedusa is only 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Tunisia, often their first port of call.
Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing, which has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, with the dangers exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
Earlier on December 12, the coast guard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted “between 600 and 700” migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
kl/bou/dcp
Syria forces launch security sweep in Homs city: state media
- Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday
DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces are conducting a security sweep in the city of Homs, state media reported on Thursday, with a monitor saying targets include protest organizers from the Alawite minority of the former president.
“The Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with the Military Operations Department, begins a wide-scale combing operation in the neighborhoods of Homs city,” state news agency SANA said quoting a security official.
The statement said the targets were “war criminals and those involved in crimes who refused to hand over their weapons and go to the settlement centers” but also “fugitives from justice, in addition to hidden ammunition and weapons.”
Since Islamist-led rebels seized power in a lightning offensive last month, the transitional government has been registering former conscripts and soldiers and asking them to hand over their weapons.
“The Ministry of Interior calls on the residents of the neighborhoods of Wadi Al-Dhahab, Akrama not to go out to the streets, remain home, and fully cooperate with our forces,” the statement said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, told AFP the two districts are majority-Alawite — the community from which ousted President Bashar Assad hails.
“The ongoing campaign aims to search for former Shabiha and those who organized or participated in the Alawite demonstrations last week, which the administration considered as incitement against” its authority, he said.
Shabiha were notorious pro-government militias tasked with helping to crush dissent under Assad.
On December 25, thousands protested in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or the date of the incident but the interior ministry said the video was “old and dates to the time of the liberation” of Aleppo in December.
Since seizing power, Syria’s new leadership has repeatedly tried to reassure minorities that they will not be harmed.
Alawites fear backlash against their community both as a religious minority and because of its long association with the Assad family.
Last week, security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad fighters in the western province of Tartus, in the Alawite heartland, state media had said, a day after 14 security personnel of the new authorities and three gunmen were killed in clashes there.
Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily
- The authority accuses the broadcaster of sowing division in the Middle East and Palestine
- The authority says Al-Jazeera was airing 'inciting material' from Jenin camp in the West Bank
CAIRO: The Palestinian Authority suspended the broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily over “inciting material,” Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
A ministerial committee that includes the culture, interior and communications ministries decided to suspend the broadcaster’s operations over what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.
The decision isn’t expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.
Al-Jazeera TV last week came under criticism by the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israeli forces in September issued Al-Jazeera with a military order to shut down operations, after they raided the outlet’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
