The International Criminal Court must probe alleged crimes against humanity after Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's youth militia launched a campaign of rape during 2008 elections, a campaign group said Wednesday.
Witness statements by rape victims, vetted by a team of international lawyers, suggest the ruling Zanu-PF unleashed "sexual terror" against women who supported the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), it said.
The charges were made by Aids-Free World, an advocacy group co-founded by the UN's former special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, after an 18-month investigation.
A legal dossier will be handed to the ICC in The Hague next month, in the hope that the court's prosecutor can launch proceedings for crimes against humanity, Lewis said.
"What we are calling for collectively is serious intervention at every level," Lewis said at a press conference at the world Aids forum in Vienna.
He urged the UN Security Council, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union to end their "criminally delinquent" silence.
"We know as we are sitting here that it's going to happen again," said Lewis.
"There's not the slightest question that Mugabe has his youth corps and his war veterans, and they are ready to do it again and the world is silent. How is it possible that he's allowed to get away with it?"
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