Tag Archives: crimes against humanity

Darfur Forever: when a country is not a country

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Iran unsuccessfully pressed Sudan to let it build a permanent naval base on the African country’s Red Sea coast, something that would have allowed Tehran to monitor maritime traffic to and from the Suez Canal and Israel, according to a senior Sudanese intelligence official. Iran has supplied Sudan’s military with explosive drones to use in its fight with a rebel warlord and offered to provide a helicopter-carrying warship if Sudan had granted permission for the base…

Sudan had close ties with Iran and its Palestinian ally Hamas under longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir. After Bashir’s ouster in a 2019 coup, the leader of the country’s military junta, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, initiated a rapprochement with the U.S. in an effort to end international sanctions. He also moved to normalize relations with Israel. Iran’s request to build a base highlights how regional powers are seeking to take advantage of Sudan’s 10-month-old civil war to gain a foothold in the country, a strategic crossroads between the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa with a 400-mile Red Sea coastline.  Sudan’s military has been fighting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Burhan’s former second-in-command, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, since mid-April 2023. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises The Biden administration has accused both the Sudanese military and the RSF of committing war crimes. The U.S. alleges the RSF also has committed crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region in western Sudan.  U.N. officials have criticized Sudan for aerial bombing of civilian neighborhoods and depriving Sudanese civilians of desperately needed humanitarian aid. U.N. agencies have also accused the RSF of atrocities, including ethnically motivated attacks in Darfur…

The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2023 that Egypt has supplied drones to the Sudanese military and trained Sudanese troops in how to use them. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, has been sending weapons to the RSF, the Journal reported in August 2023…Dubai is the biggest importer of Sudanese gold and in 2022 a U.A.E.-based consortium signed a $6 billion deal to build a new port facility on Sudan’s Red Sea coast.

Excerpts from Nicholas Bariyo, Iran Tried to Persuade Sudan to Allow Naval Base on Its Red Sea Coast, WSJ, Mar. 3, 2024

Facilitating Genocide

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Three non-government organisations (NGOs) filed a lawsuit in Paris against French bank BNP Paribas, alleging it knowingly approved a transfer of $1.3 million from the Rwandan central bank to an arms dealer during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
More than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered during a three-month killing spree by Hutu extremists after a plane carrying the president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down.  The three groups – Sherpa, CPCR (Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda) and Ibuka France – said their suit accused BNP Paribas of complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. They said a UN arms embargo on Rwanda was in effect at the time of the transfer.

The statement from the NGOs said Hutu colonel Théoneste Bagosora agreed the purchase of 80 tonnes of arms with a dealer on June 17, 1994 and these were delivered to Gisenyi in Rwanda via Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN Security Council put an arms embargo in place the previous month.  Bagosora (70) is serving a 35-year sentence for crimes against humanity in connection with the Rwandan genocide.

The NGOs said BNP’s predecessor, Banque Nationale de Paris, which merged with Paribas in 2000 to create BNP Paribas, knowingly accepted the transfer of $1.3 million from its client, the Rwandan central bank, to the arms dealer’s Swiss account.

Excerpts from NGOs file suit alleging BNP Paribas complicity in Rwanda genocide, Reuters, June 30, 2017