Word: khartoum
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...approximately 770 detainees who have been held there, Al-Hajj - the only journalist known to have been detained at Guantánamo - never had the opportunity to answer charges against him in any legal proceeding. With no explanation, U.S. military officials last May flew him to his native Khartoum, and handed him over to Sudanese authorities. In footage that is still being watched on YouTube, Al-Hajj is shown collapsing into the arms of his eight-year-old son Mohamed - who was a 14-month-old baby when Al-Hajj was arrested - weeping and squeezing him silently after his release...
Moreno-Ocampo expected diplomats to exploit Sudan's panic as a negotiating tool. Instead, he says, the U.N. and the U.S. tried to assuage al-Bashir and his men, telling the Khartoum government, "Don't worry about the prosecutor. Just accept the peacekeepers and nothing will happen." Moreno-Ocampo says the big powers feared that the ICC's obsession with Darfur would get in the way of a peace deal between the politically dominant north and the oil-rich south that ended two decades of civil war in Sudan. The Sudanese took their cue and decided to reject notification...
Moreno-Ocampo was desperate to get the warrants delivered. Finally, around May 2007, he solicited the help of an Arab ambassador who came up with a face-saving solution for the Sudanese government in this diplomatic game of tag. Khartoum officials received a DHL envelope with the warrants, signed the receipt and returned it unopened. Haroun has still not been taken into custody...
...August 2007, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon went to Khartoum with his political negotiators - without the ICC charges on any schedule for discussion. He talked privately with Bashir about the ICC and arresting Haroun; Bashir refused. As if to show the prosecutor just how impotent the ICC was, al-Bashir promoted Haroun and expanded his influence a week after Ban Ki-moon left the country. In his new position as Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Haroun was able to routinely block humanitarian aid to the 2.5 million Darfuris trapped in refugee camps. In addition, he was given three new titles...
...usually gray-tongued, empty-seated affairs. But this time, the room was packed with ICC advocates. Bruno Stagno, the Foreign Minister of Costa Rica, broke the ice: "The government of Sudan is toying with us, toying with human dignity, toying with the authority of this Council." Stagno said that Khartoum's promotion of Haroun and its refusal to arrest him is cynicism. He charged the Security Council with appeasing Khartoum, and he invoked the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. "You could see people looking at their notes, thinking, Uh-oh, I can't read this official speech, I will...