For those of you who think that Darfur is the only killing field for Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the indicted President of Sudan, let me add a note for the record.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, I was the deputy executive director at Unicef; in that capacity, I attended the annual meetings of the Organization of African Unity. The presidents, all men of course, gathered together in a bizarre ritual of camaraderie around the conference table, despots and democrats alike, achieving little or nothing of note, but greatly enjoying an orgy of self-congratulation. Even though the continent was falling apart in places, you'd never have known it from the OAU.

The value in attending lay solely in the opportunity to meet with the leaders to discuss problems that might have relevance to one's own organization and its work. For Unicef, one problem transcended all others: the abduction of thousands of children from their homes and boarding schools in Northern Uganda by the lunatic rebel group (still extant) called the Lord's Resistance Army, and the forced transport of the children to what amounted to prison camps in Sudan. In the camps, the girls were routinely raped and the boys were trained to become child soldiers.

Somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 were abducted over the past 10 to 15 years. It is estimated that a third are dead, a third are lost forever in the bowels of Sudan and a third managed to escape back to Uganda. I've interviewed many of the escapees: You cannot imagine children more abused, scarred, mutilated, traumatized and robbed of their childhood.

The entire operation was sustained by an unholy pact between Mr. al-Bashir and Joseph Kony, the madman who leads the Lord's Resistance Army, and who also, appropriately, has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

My job at the OAU on two occasions, once in Zimbabwe, and once in Burkina Faso, was to meet with Mr. al-Bashir and beg him to stop collaborating with the LRA and to return the children.

We met, along with his foreign minister. (I was accompanied by a Unicef colleague well-versed in what was happening.) We sat on plush couches in a cavernous conference room where, all around us, other presidents, in their own little cordoned-off sections, were similarly engaged with supplicants pursuing different agendas.

I made the case as persuasively as I might, pointing out that whatever differences Mr. al-Bashir had with the government of Uganda (the ostensible reason for the alliance with the LRA), they should not be resolved over the bodies of children. The President categorically denied that there were any children in Sudan who had been abducted by the LRA.

It was a lie so palpable as to take one's breath away. I explained, carefully and methodically, where the children were being held, how many in each camp, and the precise location of the camps, right down to the numbers of miles from Juba, the Southern military capital. I reminded the President that Unicef had significant staff in Sudan, and that we were incontrovertibly aware of what was going on. He didn't laugh in my face; he just dismissed me with a flippant wave of the hand.

On the second occasion, the exchange was rather more tense. It was a year later, children were dying in large numbers, beaten and starved and killed, and a great many young girls had given birth as the slave wives of local military commanders. I told the President that enough was enough, and that Sudan had to return the children and cut its ties with the LRA. Again, he and his foreign minister scoffed; the President got up and walked out. The foreign minister assured me, with contemptuous words, positively reeking of falsehood, that under no circumstances would they countenance such behaviour toward children and if they ever heard of any of these supposed children in Sudan, they would return them immediately.

I must admit that in all my time at Unicef, through the decade of the nineties, I had never dealt with anyone like Omar Hassan al-Bashir. I felt as though I had encountered evil incarnate. The fact that he was knowingly presiding over the death and emotional dismemberment of thousands of children mattered to him not one whit.

It's a matter of some irony, that in the years 1999 and 2000, Unicef finally spirited some of the children out of Sudan, but we had to hide them en route, and threaten international exposure before the government of Sudan agreed to co-operate.

When, as in the last few days, assorted African leaders and omniscient academics argue that the charges against Mr. al-Bashir be suspended or withdrawn lest they compromise the fragile peace between the North and the South of Sudan, please spare a thought for the thousands of graves of children over which this man held thrall. It may not qualify as genocide, but it certainly equals crimes against humanity.

This is neither a man nor a regime that can be trusted. His 19-year record is one of unblemished brutality and carnage.