Sudan will hand former president Omar al Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC) along with other officials wanted over the Darfur conflict, according to a statement issued by the Foreign Minister Mariam al Mahdi yesterday on Wednesday.
77-year-old Bashir has been wanted by the ICC for more than a decade over charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Sudanese region.
The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict, which erupted in the vast western region in 2003.
The cabinet’s decision to hand him over came during a visit to Sudan by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who met with Mahdi on Tuesday.
Mahdi noted the handover of wanted officials will be discussed between the cabinet and the ruling sovereign council comprised of military and civilian figures for final approval, according to state news agency Suna. The transitional authorities have previously said they would hand Bashir over, but one stumbling block was that Sudan was not party to the court’s founding Rome Statute.
But last week, Sudan’s cabinet voted to ratify the Rome Statute, a crucial move seen as one step towards Bashir potentially facing trial.
Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for three decades before being deposed amid popular protests in 2019, is behind bars in Khartoum’s high security Kober prison. The Hague-based ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir in 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
