This Is What They Get For Torture In Sudan

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 Two Sudanese Soldiers Sentenced To Death

Thursday November 17, 2005 3:01 AM

*** Compare this to what we have allowed our military and military contractors to get away with in places like Gitmo and Iraq.   --- Kevin

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - A court set up by Sudan to try war crimes in its violence-plagued Darfur region issued its first sentences Wednesday, condemning to death two soldiers in the torture killing of a Sudanese citizen.

The official Sudan News Agency said two corporals were convicted of killing the victim, whom they had accused of carrying out anti-government activities.

The defendants were members of the Sudanese military serving in Darfur, the large western region where the government and allied militias have been battling a rebel movement, SUNA said.

The news agency gave few other details of the case, saying only that the defendants were found guilty of premeditated murder, based part on testimony from witnesses.

The Sudanese government established the court in an attempt to hold off international demands for it to hand over citizens suspected of Darfur war crimes to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. The U.N. Security Council has mandated the ICC to prosecute the Darfur suspects.

At least 180,000 people have died and 2 million been displaced during two years of Darfur's crisis which erupted when rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the ethnic Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, committed wide-scale abuses against ethnic Africans.