Sudan president says only DNA test can prove rape in Darfur Friday 10 October 2008.
October 9, 2008 (KHARTOUM) – The embattled Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir vehemently denied the existence of wide scale rape campaign in the war ravaged region of Darfur in the west of the country. Al-Bashir who rarely gives interviews told the British Channel 4 News from Khartoum that rape claims are made up by Darfuri women. “The women inside the camps are under the influence of the rebels and some are even relatives of the rebels. That’s why they make these claims” Al-Bashir said. “We are fully convinced that no rape took place. It might have happened at an individual level, but this is a normal crime that can happen in any country in the world. Mass rape does not exist”. In mid-July the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced that he is seeking an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir. The ICC’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. It was only last week that judges have started reviewing the case in a process that could possibly drag on to next year. “Rape is an integral part of the pattern of destruction that the Government of the Sudan is inflicting upon the target groups in Darfur” the prosecutor stated in the summary of his application submitted to the judges. Ocampo also stated that rape in Darfur has been widely “underreported”. Al-Bashir told Channel 4 that DNA tests can be performed on children who are born from women who claim to have been raped. “There are scientific methods that can reveal who are the fathers of these children which are born” he said. But the interviewer Lindsey Hilsum challenged him by asking “So you are going to take the DNA’s of all the Janjaweed”? Al-Bashir responded by saying “You can bring the accused and take his DNA”. Hilsum again asked the Sudanese president how the raped women would be able to know the names of militia members who sexually assaulted them to perform the DNA test on them. Al-Bashir ended up saying that “these [rape claims] are all false allegations. It is not in the culture of the Darfuris. The Darfurian society does not have rape. It’s not in the tradition”. The Sudanese head of state also said that the ICC sources of information are “hostile”. “These allegations are not correct. Everything is fabricated and made up. Anything saying that we ordered killing people is untrue. The sources used by the ICC prosecutor are all hostile; they are from the rebels who revolted against the state” he said. Al-Bashir further said that he will reap over 50% of votes of Darfuris in the 2009 elections or else he “doesn’t deserve to lead the country”. “The referee is the Sudanese people….they should decide if we are really criminals, or if we are leaders of the people who should govern them in the future” he added. International experts also say more than 300,000 were killed and 2 million have been driven from their homes by the conflict in Darfur, a region that is roughly the size of France. (ST) Copyright © 2003-2008 SudanTribune - All rights reserved. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD info" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
