S.Africa set for ICC ruling for failing to arrest Bashir
THE HAGUE: War crimes judges will rule yesterday if South Africa flouted international law by failing to arrest Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, wanted for trial on charges of genocide in Darfur.
Legal experts widely expect that judges at the International Criminal Court will find that Pretoria, one of the founding members of the tribunal, failed to co- operate with the ICC based in The Hague.
And while the landmark decision will be aimed at sending a message to signatories of the court’s founding Rome Statute that they must cooperate, many believe little concrete action will follow.
Despite two international arrest warrants issued in 2009 and 2010, Bashir remains at large and in office as conflict continues to rage in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
In 2015, he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg, and despite earlier consultations between ICC and South African officials then flew out of the country again unhindered.
The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to probe the crimes in Darfur, where at least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since ethnic minorities took up arms against Bashir’s Arabdominated government in 2003, according to UN figures.
Pretoria’s lawyers argued at an April hearing at the ICC there “was no duty under international law on South Africa to arrest” Bashir.
Pretoria had sought legal clarification from ICC judges shortly before the visit, and argued there was “nothing at all” in the UN resolution to waive his diplomatic immunity.
But ICC prosecutor Julian Nicholls shot back that South Africa “had the ability to arrest and surrender him and it chose not to do so.”