World court prosecutor says Darfur a 'crime scene'

Sudan's actions in Darfur have helped turn the region into "a crime scene," the chief U.N. prosecutor charged Thursday, expanding on a scathing report this week that directly linked the government to a feared militia blamed for much of the killing. "Despite promises and denials, over the last five years, millions of civilians have been targeted by officials who vowed to protect them. Impunity reigns," International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told a rapt Security Council.

In the report obtained earlier this week by The Associated Press, Moreno-Ocampo alleged that Sudan's "whole state apparatus" is implicated in crimes against humanity in the country's western Darfur region.

According to the report, Sudan during the past six months has not shown any increased cooperation with the court — as is required under international law set by the council — in securing the arrests of people indicted by the court for crimes against humanity in the country's Darfur region.

Sudan called the allegations fictitious, vicious and harmful to the prospects of peace.

"We have seen it before. The Nazi regime invoked its national sovereignty to attack its own population, and then crossed borders to attack people in other countries," he told the council. "The evidence shows that the commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years, and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the entire Sudanese state apparatus."

He promised to present evidence next month at court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, from a lengthy probe by investigators based in neighboring Chad and from more than 100 witnesses in 18 countries.

Up to 300,000 have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps since 2003, when local ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan denies backing the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads, who are accused of the worst atrocities in the conflict.

Costa Rica's foreign affairs minister, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, urged the council to toughen its stance.

"As time passes, we risk accommodating evil as the graves continue to fill in Darfur," he said. "The government of Sudan is toying with us, toying with human dignity, toying with the authority of this council."