Word: bashir
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...March 4, the ICC issued a warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity - the first time in the court's history it has charged a sitting head of state. There is almost no hope the warrant will be served. "As soon as al-Bashir flies outside Sudan, he could be arrested," ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, told Al Jazeera on March 3. Which is to say, never...
...Wednesday, the ICC issued a warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity - the first time in its history that it has charged a sitting head of state. A charge of genocide was not included, despite ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's request and the U.S.'s repeated allegations that al-Bashir is guilty of the crime. ICC spokeswoman Laurence Blairon accused al-Bashir of "intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians...
...Still, there is almost no hope the warrant will be served. "As soon as al-Bashir flies outside Sudan, he could be arrested," Moreno-Ocampo told al-Jazeera on March 3. Which is to say, never...
...There are also questions over how meaningful the ICC really is. It was set up in 2002 after 66 countries (out of the world's 195 countries) ratified the Rome Statute; today only 108 countries have ratified it. (The contradiction escalates in al-Bashir's case, which was initiated by a U.N. Security Council referral even though three of the Security Council's five permanent members - Russia, China and the U.S. - have not signed on to the statute.) Plus, the ICC has thus far only pursued Africans, in the Central African Republic and Congo as well as Sudan and Uganda...
...Bashir has sought solidarity among fellow African leaders, a notoriously tight-knit bunch who, as Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu put it in a New York Times editorial on Tuesday, "have so far rallied behind the man responsible for turning that corner of Africa into a graveyard." Despite Sudan's having garnered the support of China and Russia, it is now all but certain that the nation will not manage to persuade the U.N. Security Council to suspend the investigation or force the ICC to postpone its decision for a year...