Sudan will vote as election under Hitler: ICC Prosecutor
The prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo pressed for the arrest warrant issued by the ICC last year against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Bashir takes part in elections.
Speaking a day after Bashir threatened to expel international observers for the election by saying that the voting would have to be delayed to deal with logistical problems, Argentina”s Moreno-Ocampo told a seminar in Brussels:
“It”s like being in an election inspector Hitler. It is an enormous challenge.”
Moreno Ocampo is not involved in the team of observers from the election. The European Union plans to send 130 observers to Sudan in April to review the election, the first vote that includes multiple parties in the country in more than two decades.
Allegations of fraud have risen before the vote. The only international observer mission in Sudan in the long term, the Carter Center, said that the elections are “at risk on multiple fronts” and urged Sudan to lift harsh restrictions on rallies and to end fighting in Darfur before the election.
Bashir expelled major aid agencies in Darfur after the ICC issued its arrest warrant last year on charges including murder, rape and torture.
Many opposition parties have demanded that elections be postponed, saying Sudan needs time to adopt democratic reforms.
The vote is parbd7t of a 2005 peace agreement that brought end more than two decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan.
(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak; published in Spanish by Rex Gowar)