Omar al-Bashir

The International Criminal Court added three genocide counts last Monday to the list of charges against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir in a move hailed by rebels as “victory for Darfur.”

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that (Omar al-Bashir) acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups” in Darfur, said a new warrant issued Monday — the court’s first for genocide.

The Justice and Equality Movement rebel group said the ruling was “a victory for the people of Darfur and the entire humanity. “It will give hope to the people of Darfur that justice will be made,” said spokesman Ahmad Hussein.

In March last year, the ICC issued a warrant for Bashir’s arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, its first ever for a sitting head of state. That warrant did not include three genocide charges as requested by prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who appealed the court’s decision.

In February, the ICC appeals chamber ordered judges to rethink their decision to omit genocide, saying they had made an “error in law” by setting the burden of proof too high.

In Monday’s decision, the court said there were reasonable grounds to believe that villages and towns “were selected on the basis of their ethnic composition” for attack by Bashir’s government forces.