Sudan's president Omar al Bashir will soon be charged with genocide, says chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo. Mr Ocampo also says that he expects an new indictment against three Darfur rebel leaders.
A three-judge panel at The Hague-based ICC in March issued a warrant for the arrest of Bashir on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's western Darfur region.
While they charged Bashir on seven counts of crimes in Darfur, two of the three judges deemed the evidence insufficient to support the most severe charge of genocide.
Ocampo now says he has clarified the case to the point that it should meet the judges' high evidence threshold: "It's more than enough for the arrest warrant phase
Ocampo says the judges had required him to go beyond the normal criteria for an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president. They asked him to provide them with sufficient grounds for belief of guilt and remove any doubt that Bashir had tried to exterminate at least one specific group of people.
Without giving details, Ocampo said he had clearly established that link. In addition, one of the two judges who had balked the genocide charge has been replaced, increasing the likelihood the judges will take a fresh look at his request.
Khartoum denies Ocampo's charges and is refusing to cooperate with the court. Despite the international arrest warrant hanging over his head, President Bashir has visited several countries that have voiced opposition to the ICC indictment, including Qatar, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt.
But Ocampo expressed satisfaction that Bashir would not be able to attend Jacob Zuma's presidential inauguration in South Africa next weekend. Pretoria warned Khartoum that the Sudanese leader could be arrested if he entered the country
The Argentinean prosecutor also expects the pre-trial judges to indict three rebel commanders soon. They are suspected of involvement in an attack that killed at least 10 African Union peacekeepers in the eastern Darfur town of Haskanita in September 2007.
If the judges indict all three commanders, that would bring the number of men indicted for Darfur war crimes to six -- the rebels, Bashir, the new governor of the oil-rich South Kordofan region Ahmad Haroun, and militia commander Ali Kushayb.
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