KHARTOUM, 10 April 2005 — Sudan said yesterday it had not banned the country’s largest opposition party, which has been pushing for the government to cooperate more with a UN resolution to send alleged war criminals to trial. The Umma Party, led by the last democratically elected leader in Sudan, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, said on Wednesday it was stopped from holding a rally and armed police and security officials stormed its headquarters, arresting officials. The party’s vice president said security officials read out an order to him banning the party from political activities.
But Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the party had not been banned. “That’s not true,” he told reporters in Khartoum yesterday. “It’s up to them to continue their political activities,” he said, adding the party had been banned only from holding the rally because it did not have the proper security permission.
Party spokeswoman Mariam Al-Mahdi, also Sadiq’s daughter, said the security services had released the party officials. “But they are still daily monitoring our movements, detaining our people and they have banned our students from holding rallies,” she told Reuters.
The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for Sudan to refer all alleged war criminals in the country’s western Darfur region to the International Criminal Court. The government rejected the resolution and has called for a mass mobilization of people and political parties to oppose what it calls a violation of Sudan’s sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the United Nations and the African Union said more than 350 militiamen destroyed a village in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region in the worst attack since January.
A joint statement issued Friday by the top UN envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the top AU envoy, Baba Gana Kingibe said the names of the militia leader and his known collaborators will be turned over for possible UN sanctions and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
The two organizations expressed “utter shock and disbelief” at Thursday’s daylong attack on the South Darfur village of Khor Abeche by armed militia from the Miseriyya tribe of Niteaga under the command of Nasir Al-Tijani Adel Kaadir. The statement said the names of Al-Tijani and his known collaborators will be turned over to a UN Security Council committee charged with deciding which Sudanese are thwarting peace efforts and should be subject to a travel ban and asset freeze.
Last Thursday, the Security Council also voted to refer cases of alleged rape, murder, village burnings and other atrocities to the International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. On Tuesday, the United Nations handed prosecutors from the tribunal thousands of documents and a sealed list of 51 people to be investigated for alleged war crimes in Darfur. Al-Tijani is the first Sudanese publicly identified as a possible war crimes suspect.
