8 Dec 2010 - Today, in a short film released by the Aegis Trust to coincide with the Confirmation of Charges hearing at the International Criminal Court against two Darfuri rebel commanders suspected of organising the worst single attack on peacekeepers in Darfur, the mother, father and brother of one of the soldiers killed - and the widows of another three, all from Nigeria - speak openly for the first time about the pain of losing their loved ones, and call strongly for justice.
It was on 29 September 2007 that around 1,000 Darfuri rebels overran the African Union base at Haskanita, North Darfur, stealing vehicles, ammunition and equipment and killing or fatally wounding twelve peacekeepers, among them nine soldiers from Nigeria and one each from Bostwana, Mali and Senegal.
"It's important and it's good that the ICC is doing the right thing. If not because of anything, because of my daughter, because she will ask me one day and I will have something to tell her," says Mariam Mohammed, who daughter Aisha was two years old when her father, Private Bala Mohammed, was killed at Haskanita.
The possibility that the United Nations Security Council could invoke Article 16 of the Rome Statute and suspend the Darfur investigation - affecting both the cases against the Sudanese President and the Darfuri rebels - met with a strongly negative response from the bereaved.
"Politicians who want the case to stop, whatever their mind or whatever their intentions, they also should be getting arrested," says Isaac Orokpo, whose elder brother, Private Samuel Orokpo, was killed at Haskanita. "If they allow the trial to stop, other countries who might have such a problem later, they can't call and stop it. But if these people can be prosecuted properly ... I think other countries, and other politicians, will learn their lessons."
