A UN rights commission in South Sudan said Friday there was sufficient evidence to charge at least 41 senior officers and officials with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country’s four-year-old civil war.
The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said soldiers and officials loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar were both responsible for crimes.
"There is sufficient evidence to conclude that... the parties to the conflict are deliberately targeting civilians on the basis of their ethnic identity and by means of killings, abductions, rape and sexual violence, as well as the destruction of villages and looting. These acts constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," the commission's report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, said.
The report -- based on 58,000 documents and 230 witness statements -- is a litany of horrors and extraordinary cruelty. Some victims were beheaded, burned alive or had their throats cut, others had their eyes gouged out or were tortured.
Sexual violence was particularly prevalent with numerous accounts of gang rape and child rape, and in "cases reminiscent of Bosnia" of people forced to watch or participate in the rape of loved ones.
Yasmin Sooka, chairperson of the commission, said the African Union (AU) should set up a court “straight away and the prosecutor could begin working on indictments.”
“Ultimately this is the only way to stop the rampant devastation of millions of human lives by South Sudan's leaders," she said.
