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Beshir ‘Exterminating’ People in Darfur: ICC | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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LONDON (AFP) – The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor accused Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir of “exterminating” people in Darfur in an interview released on the BBC’s website Saturday.

The Sudanese foreign ministry hit back accusing Luis Moreno Ocampo of behaving like a politician not a judicial official over the warrant for Beshir’s arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the six-year-old conflict in Darfur.

The judges dropped three genocide charges that Ocampo had requested be included in the warrant. The prosecutor has appealed against that omission.

Ocampo told BBC radio: “The judge has decided that Omar Beshir is exterminating the citizens in the camps.”

He added that Khartoum’s dismissal of some aid agencies from the area confirmed that Beshir “is exterminating these people.

“That is why arresting Beshir is needed, to stop the crimes,” Ocampo said. “In the meantime, as soon (as) Omar Beshir travel(s) outside (Sudan), he could be arrested and I will work for that.”

The Khartoum government reacted to the arrest warrant against Beshir by expelling 13 aid agencies from Darfur in a move that the United Nations warned would have serious implications for the 2.7 million people who have fled their homes in the six-year-old conflict.

But Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Ali Sadiq retorted that the prosecutor’s comments “show that he is working more as a politician than as a legal professional.”

The United Nations has warned aid agency expulsions will leave 1.1 million people without food, 1.5 million without healthcare and more than a million without drinking water.

It says at least 300,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict, many of them from starvation or disease. Sudan puts the death toll at 10,000.