VIENNA - 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.

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 an advocacy group AIDS-Free World.

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.

In 300 hours of testimony, victims identified 241 men who raped them, and estimated the total acts of rape to be 380.

Activists were raped in front of their families or abducted by ZANU-PF youths who marched them to militia bases or camps in the countryside, where they were repeatedly assaulted, sometimes over days, the document said.

“Nine of the women believe they were infected by HIV/AIDS as a result of the rapes, and an additional 17 women also tested positive in the months following the rapes, raising the possibility that their rapists infected them. Ten women reported that they became pregnant by their rapists.”

Police were indifferent to the few women who had the courage to file a complaint, and not a single rapist has been prosecuted, it said.

The MDC said more than 300 people were killed in pre-election violence.

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