Sudan head ordered held in S.A.

• A South African judge on Sunday ordered authorities to prevent Sudanese President Omar alBashir, who is in South Africa for an African Union summit, from leaving the country because of an international order for his arrest, human rights activists said.

Al-Bashir appeared for a group photo with other African leaders at the summit in Johannesburg on Sunday, wearing a blue three-piece suit, a tie and a smile as cameras flashed.

A South African judge ordered authorities to prevent al-Bashir from leaving South Africa because he is wanted by the International Criminal Court, human rights activists said Sunday.

“President Omar al-Bashir is prohibited from leaving the Republic of South Africa until a final order is made in this application,” Judge Hans Fabricius said, according to local media reports.

The judge ordered the South African government to ensure that officials at all border posts enforce the court’s decision, according to Caroline James, a lawyer with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, a rights group. The court is expected to rule on Monday if al-Bashir should be handed over to the ICC to face charges of alleged genocide and human rights abuses.

Kamal Ismail, the Sudanese state minister for foreign affairs, told reporters in Khartoum that al-Bashir had received assurances from the South African government prior to his visit that he would be welcome and was expected to return to Sudan on schedule.

He said the court order preventing al-Bashir from leaving South Africa “has nothing to do with the reality on the ground there,” adding “until now things are normal and there is no threat to the life of the president of the Republic.”

The African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, said the South African government granted immunity “for all (summit) participants as part of the international norms for countries hosting such gathering of the AU or even the United Nations.”

“It is on this basis, amongst others, that the ANC calls upon government to challenge the order now being brought to compel the South African government to detain President alBashir,” the ANC said, adding that African and eastern European countries “continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC.”

Even before Sunday’s events, the AU had asked the ICC to stop proceedings against sitting presidents and said it will not compel any member states to arrest a leader on behalf of the court.

Al-Bashir has travelled abroad before and local authorities had not detained him at the behest of the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said South Africa is under a legal obligation to arrest al-Bashir and surrender him to the court. Her office has been in touch with South African authorities on the Sudanese president’s reported visit.

If al-Bashir is not arrested, the matter will be reported to the court’s assembly of states and the UN Security Council, which first referred the case of Sudan’s Darfur region to the ICC in 2005, she said.

The charges against alBashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, stem from reported atrocities in the conflict in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and two million displaced in a government campaign, according to UN figures.

Omar al-Bashir is prohibited from leaving