From a November 2008 Op-Ed by David Scheffer, a U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues from 1997 to 2001:
“The evidence presented by Moreno-Ocampo appears compelling. The prosecutor’s investigation reveals that, since 2003, Bashir’s forces and agents have driven about 2.5 million Sudanese, including substantial numbers of the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, into camps of internally displaced persons. They then raped and inflicted other forms of severe sexual violence on thousands, and continue to do so. A common tactic is for the janjaweed militia and Sudan’s armed forces and security agents to lie in wait outside the camps to rape — or often gang-rape — the women and girls who come out to collect firewood, grass or water in order to survive.”
“Maybe around 20 men rape one woman,” said one victim in a report cited by the prosecutor. “These things are normal for us here in Darfur. … They rape women in front of their mothers and fathers.”
