British aid agencies expelled from Sudan as Bashir indicted

Published on Wednesday 4 March 2009 22:54

TWO British aid agencies have been expelled from Sudan in the wake of the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.

The Sudanese government has ordered Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK to suspend operations in parts of the country.

The warrant is the first issued against a sitting head of state by the Hague court, which stopped short of including a count of genocide over a conflict that United Nations officials say has killed as many as 300,000 people since 2003.

A UN spokeswoman said Sudan had seized assets and ordered the expulsion of six to ten aid groups.

The court, which was set up in 2002, indicted Bashir, 65, on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which include murder, rape and torture. The panel said it had insufficient grounds for genocide.

"His victims are the very civilians that he as a president was supposed to protect," said Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC's chief prosecutor, adding that Sudan's government was obliged to execute the warrant. "It could be in two months or two years, but he will face justice," he added.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Khartoum to protest against the arrest warrant. Bashir has dismissed the allegations made by the ICC, the world's first permanent court for prosecuting war crimes, as part of a western conspiracy. "It is a flawed decision," said a Sudanese presidential spokesman. "We do not recognise it."

Tension mounted in Sudan's western Darfur region, where UN officials said hundreds of Sudanese government troops paraded through the regional capital, El Fasher.

Mutrif Siddiq, Sudan's under-secretary of foreign affairs, said Bashir planned to attend an Arab summit this month in Qatar, despite the warrant.

Richard Dicker, an international justice expert from Human Rights Watch, said the ICC's inability to arrest was an "Achilles heel". He said: "The International Criminal Court, of course, has no police force of its own to go out and execute its judicial orders and is dependent on the government of Sudan to carry out this arrest warrant."

Washington welcomed the move, while China, the African Union and the Arab League suggested that an indictment could destabilise the region.