THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court said Monday they are taking steps to preserve evidence from Sudan’s Darfur region of possible war crimes carried out by a paramilitary force after it seized a key government stronghold and reportedly killed hundreds of people.
The court “is taking immediate steps regarding the alleged crimes in El-Fasher to preserve and collect relevant evidence for its use in future prosecutions,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
The alleged atrocities “are part of a broader pattern of violence that has afflicted the entire Darfur region” and they “may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.
Last week, the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group, captured the key city of El-Fasher after besieging it for 18 months.
Witnesses have reported fighters going house to house, killing civilians and committing sexual assaults. According to the World Health Organization, groups of gunmen killed at least 460 people at a hospital and abducted doctors and nurses.
Many details of the hospital attack and other violence in the city have been slow to emerge, and the total death toll remains unclear.
The fall of El-Fasher heralds a new phase of the brutal, two-year war between the RSF and the military in Africa’s third-largest country.
The court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.
Karim Khan has stepped down temporarily as the ICC chief prosecutor pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, which he categorically denies.
Earlier this month, the court convicted a suspect of crimes in Darfur for the first time, after looking into atrocities in the area for more than two decades. Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, was found guilty of ordering mass executions and bludgeoning two prisoners to death with an ax.
