The ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan urged civil society organizations to provide any evidence and material to aid an urgent investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region.
“We’re asking national authority counterparts, State parties and non-State parties alike, to share any evidence... in relation to these profound allegations of international crimes that are increasingly emerging and cannot be ignored,” Khan said following an attack on the South Hospital in al-Fasher, the capital city of North Darfur province on Sunday.
In a statement on X, Khan said he was “particularly concerned by the ethnically motivated nature” of attacks on civilian populations, especially in the western Darfur region, asking people to provide evidence so the ICC could investigate further.
Legal expert Hatem Elias told Asharq Al-Awsat on Wednesday that “the Darfur file being investigated by the ICC is still open based on Security Council resolutions and previous court investigations that led to the charges against former President Omar al-Bashir, and a number of his aides.”
Elias said that previous Security Council resolutions granting the ICC the power to prosecute crimes against humanity “enabled the court to collect strong evidence confirming that crimes against humanity were committed in Darfur.”
For his part, legal expert and human rights activist El Moez Hadra told Asharq Al-Awsat that Khan’s appeal reveal that the ICC is interested to investigate the fresh attacks on al-Fasher and at the same time, continue to respect the 2005 Security Council resolution that referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC Prosecutor for investigations into allegations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The ICC is currently questioning old and new suspects,” he said.
But the legal expert appealed to the ICC Prosecutor to form an international commission of inquiry that visits Sudan and provides its own evidence rather than just urge organizations to offer information.
Khan, as a public prosecutor, has the right to form an ICC commission tasked to collect factual evidence rather than ask for information from activists and human rights defenders, who are at risk and are being killed and detained by both warring sides in Sudan, Hadra affirmed.
He based his request on the well-known Security Council “Cassese Commission” that investigated war crimes in Darfur. The commission was led by the Italian Antonio Cassese and Egyptian Mohammed Fayek, who visited Darfur and wrote their own report on the situation in the country, the expert explained.
Hadra said Khan’s appeal for organizations to provide the court with evidence is “useless.”
“It’s not going to help the court because evidence is lost over time and witnesses are moving to other places... It is important to send an ICC field team that has international protection,” Hadra said, adding that Sudanese teams and lawyers are getting killed while investigating war crimes in the country.
