International court given list of war-crimes suspects

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has given the International Criminal Court a list of 51 people suspected of slaughter, rape and pillaging in Sudan's Darfur region, the first step towards a war-crimes prosecution.

The sealed list was gathered by an independent commission sent by the UN Security Council to Darfur last year, which reported mass killings of civilians, systematic rape and burning of villages.

The Darfur case is the first referred by the Security Council to the tribunal, the world's first permanent criminal court.