The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has filed genocide charges against Sudan’s president for facilitating five years of brutal murder and rape in his country, according to CNN.
Moreno-Ocampo, whose path to developing the prosecution’s case to convict Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir was partially chronicled in the film Darfur Now [click to read], urged a three-judge panel to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir today (July 14) in hopes that it would prevent the deaths of approximately 2.5 million people forced from their homes and are still under attack from the government-assisted Janjaweed militia.
The five charges against al-Bashir include masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes with murder, rape and deportation.
“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,” said Moreno-Ocampo in an interview.
Moreno-Ocampo’s request says the there is reason to believe that that al-Bashir bears criminal responsibility for five counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of war crimes.
“They are raping women, raping girls, raping in groups — raping to
destroy the communities,” said Moreno-Ocampo. “Rape is a tool in
the genocide — the most important tool today.“
To read about the genocide in Darfur and how it connect to Hip Hop, check out HipHopDX’s three-part series Hip Hop and Darfur: [Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three]
More on this story as it develops.
