Sudanese president charged with genocide

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The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has filed genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for a five-year campaign of violence in Darfur.

They include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in the war-torn region with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.

The judges must now decide whether to issue the warrant, and it is widely expected that they will; the judges have approved all 11 of Moreno-Ocampo's previous submissions to the court.

If issued, the warrant would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide.

In his request, Moreno-Ocampo says there are reasonable grounds to believe that al-Bashir bears criminal responsibility for five counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of war crimes.

The alleged crimes stem from a brutal counter-insurgency campaign the Sudanese government conducted after rebels began an uprising in Sudan's western Darfur region in 2003. The United States and much of the world has already characterized the campaign as genocide.

The authorities armed and cooperated with Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents there, according to the United Nations, western governments and human rights organizations. The militias targeted civilian members of tribes from which the rebels draw strength.

About 300,000 people have died in Darfur, the United Nations estimates, and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes.

Moreno-Ocampo says al-Bashir targeted three ethnic groups living in the region -- including the Fur group, for whom Darfur is named -- solely on account of their ethnicity.

"For such crimes to be committed over a period of five years and throughout Darfur, al-Bashir had to mobilize and keep mobilized the whole state apparatus; he had to control and direct perpetrators; and he had to rely on a genocidal plan," Moreno-Ocampo wrote as background for arrest warrant request.

"It is a criminal move that should be resisted by all," Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said Friday amid reports that the charges were imminent. "We will resist it by all possible legal means."

Mohamad accused Moreno-Ocampo of "playing with fire."

A high-ranking ambassador at the presidential palace called the possible prosecution stupid and malicious, and warned that the Sudanese people would see it as proof of a larger conspiracy against the country.

"After three years I have strong evidence that al-Bashir is committing a genocide. I cannot be blackmailed, I cannot yield. Silence never helped the victims. Silence helped the perpetrators. The prosecutor should not be silent."

Members of Sudan's armed forces, often acting together with the militias and under al-Bashir's command, singled out villages and towns inhabited by tribal groups. Troops and militia members shot and killed civilians, and sometimes the Sudanese air force was called in to bomb villages and towns in support of the ground forces, the prosecutor's evidence says.

The attacks, it says, undermined the ability of the targeted groups to survive in Darfur. The destruction of their homes scattered entire communities, and the pervasive rape and sexual violence against girls and women -- who are often targeted when they are out collecting firewood or water -- has torn families apart.

"They are raping women, raping girls, raping in groups -- raping to destroy the communities," he told CNN. "Rape is a tool in the genocide -- the most important tool today."

Once the ICC indicts someone, authorities in that person's native country -- or the country in which the indicted person is located -- have the power to detain the indicted person for trial at the Hague.