ICC prosecutor expects court to issue arrest warrants over violence in Sudan

Karim Khan reports significant progress in investigation and calls for increased Sudanese co-operation

Members of a joint security cell made up of various military and security services affiliated with Sudan's army. AFP

The top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Monday that he expects to issue arrest warrant applications soon for key people responsible for the violence in Sudan.

The ICC last year opened a new investigation into war crimes in the region and “investigators, analysts, lawyers, the men and women of our office, with civil society … have made some significant progress”, Karim Khan told the UN Security Council.

“I will be in a position I believe, where, I hope, by my next report [in six months], I will be able to announce applications for warrants of arrest regarding those or some of those individuals that are the most responsible for what we're seeing at the moment.”

Mr Khan urged the Sudanese government to expedite its co-operation with the UN top court, acknowledging that “some good steps” have been made.

“We need continuous, deepening co-operation with the Sudanese armed forces, with Gen [Abdel Fattah] Al Burhan and his government moving forward,” he stressed.

Presenting his half-yearly report to the UN Security Council, Mr Khan deplored a “further deterioration” of the situation and described “a terrible six months for the people of Darfur”.

“Terror has become a common currency” endured by civilians, he said. “Many credible reports of rapes, crimes against and affecting children, persecution on a mass scale inflicted against the most vulnerable.”

Sudan was plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into open fighting in the capital Khartoum, before spreading across the country.

The Darfur region has seen some of the worst and most devastating bouts of fighting.

The conflict has killed thousands of people and pushed many into starvation. It has created the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 10 million people forced to flee their homes since April 2023, according to the UN.

More than two million of those have fled to neighbouring countries.

Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, urged Sudanese authorities to intensify efforts to arrest fugitives still at large and to grant the ICC access and protection for its investigative activities in the country.

He also appealed to the international community to co-operate with the ICC regarding suspects who are subject to arrest warrants and urged stakeholders to turn their attention to peace talks.

The Sudanese representative Al Harith Idriss Al Harith Mohamed said his country is taking steps to join the ICC in an attempt to seek further co-operation with the court.

He said Sudanese authorities are willing to respond to requests by the prosecutor however the RSF has “deliberately worked on destroying the judicial memory, setting ablaze the courtrooms, destroying the documents and records”.

Both sides in the Sudan war have been accused of war crimes, including deliberately killing civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and blocking humanitarian aid.

The RSF’s forerunner, a militia known as the Janjaweed, has been accused of war crimes in Darfur during the conflict in the 2000s, as well as in the current war.

The ICC is already investigating accusations that RSF fighters and allied militiamen last summer killed thousands of people belonging to the ethnic African Masalit tribe in western Darfur. Tens of thousands have fled the region to neighbouring Chad.