It started with a rallying call to the Janjawid militias and government soldiers: “Kill the Fur.”

The fighters, drawn largely from the Arab tribes of Darfur, needed no further encouragement from Ahmed Haroun, then an interior minister, who had flown from Khartoum to the town of Mukjar on a dry August day to deliver his message. Witness statements told how he urged the nomadic militias to take on the Fur tribe as part of a campaign against Darfur rebels.

By the time that they had finished, the Janjawid had done much more than seek to exterminate one of the settled farming peoples of the region. They raped, murdered and tortured their way through the civilian population of West Darfur as part of a scorched-earth policy, according to the indictment delivered to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Mr Haroun, now the Sudanese Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and a rising star in the Khartoum Government, and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, yesterday became the first suspects accused of crimes against humanity in the Darfur region by the ICC.

Mr Haroun and Mr Kushayb were accused of criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2003 and 2004.

Mr Haroun was accused of overseeing and facilitating atrocities including rape, murder and torture by ferrying arms and ammunition to the Janjawid and paying them from an “unlimited and not publicly audited” budget. Prosecutors quoted the minister as saying at a public meeting that he had been given “all the power. . . to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur”.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court’s chief prosecutor, asked its judges to issue arrest warrants and said that more high-profile names could follow as he continued to investigate the bloody conflict that the UN says has left 200,000 dead and 2.5 million driven from their homes.

“Those who commit atrocities cannot do so with impunity,” Mr Moreno-Ocampo said, after publishing a 94-page summary of allegations. His team took 100 witness statements in 17 countries.

The naming of suspects will add to international pressure on Sudan to fall into line with demands to restore order in the vast desert province of Darfur. It also shows that, despite its denials, there is evidence of government collusion with the Janjawid at the highest levels. The Janjawid swept through the region of Wadi Saleh, one of the most fertile parts of the Fur’s traditional heartland. Tens of thousands of people were moved forcibly in a policy allegedly managed by Mr Haroun and executed by Mr Kushayb, the “Aqid al-Oqada”, or colonel of colonels, in charge of thousands of Janjawid fighters. With little more than a satellite phone and a 4x4 supplied by the Government, Mr Haroun is believed to have organised the clearance of dozens of Fur villages. His fighters are accused of driving scores of prisoners out of Mukjar into the desert, in March 2004, where they were made to lie down, then were shot and buried in mass graves.

Leslie Lefkow, of Human Rights Watch, said that the killings in West Darfur happened during one of the most brutal episodes of the Darfur conflict. “It’s significant that the ICC is going after the people who were part of the picture of those responsible for some very, very serious abuses,” she said.

Sally Chin, Sudan analyst with the International Crisis Group, said: “It’s noteworthy that one of the people named is a senior minister in the Khartoum Government and this is the first time that the ICC has tried to prosecute any government official in any investigation.” She added that the international community would have to bring all its influence to bear on Sudan if the Government was to comply with the ICC.

Any trial may take years to come to court, given Khartoum’s immediate rejection of the court’s jurisdiction.

Ali al-Mardi, the Sudanese Justice Minister, said: “The Sudanese judiciary has the capacity and the will to prosecute those who have committed crimes in Darfur.”

Mr Kushayb is being held by the Sudanese Government but Mr al-Mardi rejected the allegation that his fellow minister was a key militia leader.

A catalogue of atrocities

— Conflict began in 2003 when rebels bombed government targets in protest against claimed neglect of the region

— Two main rebel groups are fighting against the Khartoum Government, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement

— An estimated 200,000 people have died in the conflict, including those killed by starvation and disease

— Two million people are living in camps after fleeing fighting

— 200,000 refugees have sought safety in neighbouring Chad. Many are camped along the border and are vulnerable to attacks from Sudan

— 7,000 African Union troops have been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate

— 50 key suspects have been named. The UN backed attempts to have them tried at the ICC in The Hague

Source: Times archives

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