The rebel, Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, turned himself over to the court and, when asked for his profession, quietly replied that he was “a commander of a resistance movement.” The judge read him his rights and the charges: three counts of war crimes, including murder and pillaging.
Abu Garda, 46, a man of polite comportment in an impeccable business suit, did not look the part of a fighter who, as an associate traveling with him put it, had spent the better part of the past five years “in the field,” fighting in and around West Darfur. Up to five insurgent groups are battling the Sudanese government there. Abu Garda leads the United Resistance Front.
He and two other rebel chiefs have been accused by the court prosecutor of being involved in an attack in September 2007 in which about a thousand rebels stormed a base of African Union peacekeepers, killing 12 of them and seriously wounding 8. After the attack on the base, in Haskanita in Darfur, the rebels fled with the peacekeepers’ equipment and vehicles, the prosecutor said. The two other rebel leaders have yet to go to The Hague.
Legal experts said the case against the three rebel leaders included several novel aspects. They said this was the first time that an international court had brought a case focused exclusively on the killing of peacekeepers. Peacekeepers have been attacked before, but those cases have been part of other proceedings or tried in national courts, the experts said.
Prosecutors and judges have to establish that the peacekeepers were not involved in combat or other warlike activities, the experts said. Rebels previously claimed that the peacekeepers — from Botswana, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal — had been helping their enemy, the Sudanese government. Court investigators said this week that they had found no evidence of that.
The prosecutor also has to make the case that wounding, killing and robbing peacekeepers is a grave crime by the international court’s standards.
“You are looking at the deaths of 12 peacekeepers, however de
Maplorable this may be, but compare that to the thousands of civilians who have been raped and killed by the government forces and the government militia,” said one court official on the condition of anonymity to abide by court rules. Nearly a dozen other peacekeepers have been killed and many more wounded by both rebels and Sudanese government forces since 2008.
The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has contended that killing peacekeepers is indeed grave because it constitutes an attack on “the millions of civilians who those soldiers came to protect.” He has similarly criticized attacks on aid workers.
The rebel commander’s voluntary appearance in court has created a deliberate contrast to the reaction of the government officials who have been issued arrest warrants, including a cabinet minister and the country’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Both have vilified the court, saying it has no jurisdiction over events in Sudan..
The rebel commander will return to his soldiers, said Tadjadine Niam, a member of a delegation traveling with him. Abu Garda will be expected back in The Hague if a trial is scheduled, but he is not obliged to attend interim hearings, the judge said.
Marlise Simons, The New York Times, 19.05.09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/world/africa/19darfur.html?ref=africa
Nulla dies sine linea 