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Khartoum/New York: Up to 1,500 loyalists protested outside the republican palace in Khartoumon Thursday, shouting death to the world court prosecutor for seeking the arrest of Sudan's President Omar Al Bashir.
Shouting "God is Great" and "Go forward Bashir" students and Arab tribesmen from western Sudan's war-torn Darfur region angrily condemned allegations that their head of state was guilty of genocide and war crimes.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Monday accused Al Bashir of masterminding a genocidal campaign against three ethnic groups in Darfur and requested an arrest warrant on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Al Bashir's ruling National Congress Party organised the two-hour demonstration at which the crowd cried "we, the Darfur tribes support Al Bashir," "death for Ocampo" and "we protect our president from any arrest".
Protesters stamped on posters of Moreno-Ocampo, considered a great insult in Islam.
Other protestors held aloft Moreno-Ocampo's picture smeared with giant crosses or captioned "shame, shame".
One frenzied supporter even ripped apart a poster, chewed it up and spat it out.
Complex conflict
Members of the ethnic groups that Moreno-Ocampo accused Al Bashir of trying to destroy, the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, who belong to the president's party in the complex overlapping nature of the Darfur conflict, also attended the rally.
"Who gave Moreno-Ocampo a mandate to speak in our name?" shouted Fur representative, Mohammad Naim, into a megaphone.
In a similar show of national unity, presidential advisor Nafie Ali Nafie, who is the government's negotiator on stalled Darfur peace negotiations, said Sudan's opposition to the International Criminal Court extended to rebels.
"If the ICC wants to arrest members of any rebel movement, we will not agree," he told the crowd.
An AFP photographer on the scene said the protesters numbered between 1,000 and 1,500, making it the biggest such rally since Monday.
Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday in New York his request for a warrant to arrest the Sudanese president on genocide charges was not timed to coincide with the court's tenth anniversary celebration three days later.
Moreno-Ocampo said the UN Security Council asked him to investigate the Darfur crisis and he was reporting his progress, before requesting a court warrant Monday to arrest Al Bashir.
With the court about to go on a summer recess, he told reporters yesterday, "this was my last week to do it so I did it when I had my evidence ready".
Permanent tribunal
The world's first permanent war crimes tribunal is based on a treaty adopted on July 17, 1998, and since ratified by 107 nations.
Meanwhile, Syria's Foreign Minister said genocide charges against Sudan's president set a dangerous new precedent.
Walid Al Moallem says the International Criminal Court "trespassed beyond its prerogatives" when its prosecutor indicted Al Bashir.
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