WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Washington “would take a look at” the possibility of extraditing a US-based Muslim cleric who Ankara suspects of being behind a 2016 coup attempt, but he made no commitment, the White House said on Tuesday.
“The only thing he said is that we would take a look at it,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “Nothing further at this point beyond that ... nothing committal at all in that process.”
Turkey’s foreign minister said on Sunday that Trump told Erdogan that Washington was working on extraditing the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has lived in self-imposed US exile for nearly two decades.
Asked about the comment on Monday, another White House official said only that Trump did not commit to extraditing Gulen when he spoke to Erdogan at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month. The official offered no further detail on the conversation.
Turkish officials blame Gulen for a failed coup in Turkey in which rogue soldiers attacked Parliament and shot unarmed civilians.
Gulen denies any involvement.
The extradition of Gulen is just one of several issues that have strained the relationship between the two countries.
The US and Turkey, NATO allies, have gone through a rough patch in 2018, exacerbated by the Turkish detention of a US pastor.
Turkey’s release of the pastor, Andrew Brunson, was a “tremendous step” toward improved relations, Trump said in October, while denying he made a deal with Ankara for the move.
But tensions flared again last week over the two countries’ positions on Syria. The Pentagon warned that unilateral military action into northeast Syria by any party would be “unacceptable,” after Turkey said it would launch a new military operation in the region.
Trump said last month he was not considering extraditing Gulen as part of efforts to ease Turkish pressure on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
Trump willing to look at extraditing Turkish cleric, but noncommittal
Trump willing to look at extraditing Turkish cleric, but noncommittal
- The extradition of Gulen is just one of several issues that have strained the relationship between the two countries
Sudan paramilitary used mass graves to conceal war crimes: ICC deputy prosecutor
- Reports of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions and looting emerged in the wake of the RSF’s sweep of El-Fasher
UNITED NATIONS: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces carried out mass killings in Darfur and attempted to conceal them with mass graves, the International Criminal Court’s deputy prosecutor said on Monday.
In a briefing to the UN Security Council, Nazhat Shameem Khan said it was the “assessment of the office of the prosecutor that war crimes and crimes against humanity” had been committed in the RSF’s takeover of the city of El-Fasher in October.
“Our work has been indicative of mass killing events and attempts to conceal crimes through the establishment of mass graves,” Khan said in a video address, citing audio and video evidence as well as satellite imagery.
Since April 2023, a civil war between the Sudanese army and the RSF has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
Reports of mass killings, sexual violence, abductions and looting emerged in the wake of the RSF’s sweep of El-Fasher, which was the army’s last holdout position in the Darfur region.
Both warring sides have been accused of atrocities throughout the war.
Footage reviewed by the ICC, Khan said, showed RSF fighters detaining, abusing and executing civilians in El-Fasher, then celebrating the killings and “desecrating corpses.”
According to Khan, the material matched testimony gathered from affected communities, while submissions from civil society groups and other partners had further corroborated the evidence.
The atrocities in El-Fasher, she added, mirror those documented in the West Darfur capital of El-Geneina in 2023, where UN experts determined the RSF killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people, mostly from the Massalit tribe.
She said a picture was emerging of “appalling organized, widespread mass criminality.”
“It will continue until this conflict and the sense of impunity that fuels it are stopped,” she added.
Khan also issued a renewed call for Sudanese authorities to “work with us seriously” to ensure the surrender of all individuals subject to outstanding warrants, including former longtime president Omar Al-Bashir, former ruling party chairman Ahmed Haroun and ex-defense minister Abdul Raheem Mohammed Hussein.
She said Haroun’s arrest in particular should be “given priority.”
Haroun faces 20 counts of crimes against humanity and 22 war-crimes charges for his role in recruiting the Janjaweed militia, which carried out ethnic massacres in Darfur in the 2000s and later became the RSF.
He escaped prison in 2023 and has since reappeared rallying support for the Sudanese army.
Khan spoke to the UN Security Council via video link after being denied a visa to attend in New York due to sanctions in place against her by the United States.
