Sudan is to try 164 suspects, some of them government officials, for abuses including rape and murder in the war-wracked western region of Darfur. The announcement came as the UN Security Council prepared to debate a French draft resolution referring 51 suspects identified by a UN investigation for trial on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The state Suna news agency said charges had already been pressed against the 164 by a government-appointment judicial commission of inquiry. "All those suspects, including some government officials, will be sent to the judiciary to stand fair trials," the panel's chairman Muhammad Abd al-Rahim Ali, a high court judge, told Suna in the North Darfur state capital of al-Fashir. He said 150 of the cases involved alleged offences in North Darfur, and the other 14 accusations from South Darfur. Ali's commission said it would continue receiving and investigating complaints of abuses "without a time limit." The announcement appeared to be an attempt to preempt any move by the UN Security Council to order overseas trials for Darfur war crimes suspects, which Khartoum bitterly opposes. "This proposal is unacceptable and we are going to confront it through dialogue," Foreign Minister Mustafa Usman Ismail said of the latest french draft. Khartoum insists it is a sovereign nation and that prosecutions for offences on its territory should be through the Sudanese courts.
| Trying them really, really quick, and then hanging them until they're really, really dead might preempt international action. But we're dealing with the UN, so they might also just go through a few motions until the whole things blows over. |