On 20 November 2008, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed an Application under Article 58 of the Rome Statute, requesting the issuance of warrants of arrests against “commanders of rebel groups in Darfur”. The crimes charged in the Application concern the attack against the Haskanita camp of the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), on 29 September 2007.

During this attack, which was conducted by approximately 1,000 rebel troops and 30 vehicles mounted with heavy weapons, twelve AMIS peacekeepers were killed, and the camp was pillaged. The joint rebel forces took away 17 vehicles as well as refrigerators, computers, cellular phones, military boots and uniforms, fuel, ammunition and money.

The alleged perpetrators are charged with three counts of war crimes, namely (1) murder, (2) intentionally directing attacks against peacekeeping mission personnel and installations, and (3) pillaging.

Five years in Darfur

The African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, Sudan, founded in 2004, with an original force of 150 troops. By mid-2005, its numbers were increased to approximately 7,000. The badly equipped AMIS force was merged into UNAMID, the United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur, on 31 December 2007. This United Nations mission, created under UN Security Council Resolution 1762, today totals more than 10,000 troops from 31 countries. UNAMID is supposed to number up to 26,000 military and police troops. Eleven UNAMID soldiers have been killed in Darfur since the beginning of the 2008.

The Darfur situation was referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council in Resolution 1593, adopted on 31 March 2005. Two persons, including a member of the government, have so far been indicted by the ICC, and on 14 July 2008, the Prosecutor presented genocide evidence against the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir.

Press release
Summary of the Prosecutor’s application