Sudan defiant as President visits Turkey

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Sudan said Tuesday it would continue to defy the International Criminal Court (ICC) as its President, named as a possible war crimes suspect in Darfur, attended a summit of African leaders in Turkey.

Omar al-Bashir’s visit to Istanbul for the two-day Turkey-Africa Cooperation Summit was his first trip abroad since an ICC prosecutor asked the court last month for his arrest on 10 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the war-wracked region of Darfur.

“The President can go everywhere and we are not afraid of anything... This ICC is ridiculous,” Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, Sudanese Ambassador to the UN, told reporters on the sidelines of the gathering, held in an historic Ottoman palace on the shores of the Bosphorus.