Word: ocampo
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...Moreno-Ocampo tells it, his pursuit of al-Bashir over the past three years has come in the face of diplomatic obstruction and political accommodation. It was, in his eyes, predictable that the Sudanese would withhold visas, deny access to crime scenes and establish bogus trials in an effort to obviate the need for the ICC. But what he found surprising and dispiriting was that high-ranking international diplomats ignored, and even seemed to discourage, his efforts. The U.N. instead tried to negotiate the deployment of additional peacekeepers to Darfur as a solution to the crisis. But Sudan rejected...
...Moreno-Ocampo's "arsonists" was Ahmed Haroun, who in 2003 and 2004, as Sudan's Minister of the Interior, allegedly organized the janjaweed militia to murder and destroy villages in Darfur. In February 2007, Moreno-Ocampo indicted Haroun and one of his henchmen, Ali Koshayb, a janjaweed leader. The indictment threw the Sudanese into a panic, Moreno-Ocampo says, and they dispatched an ambassador with a question: "Suppose Haroun comes to the Hague and says he was only following instruction - do you have to investigate the person who gave the instructions?" Moreno-Ocampo believes the inquiry was about President...
...Moreno-Ocampo expected diplomats to exploit Sudan's panic as a negotiating tool. Instead, he says, the U.N. and the U.S. tried to assuage al-Bashir and his men, telling the Khartoum government, "Don't worry about the prosecutor. Just accept the peacekeepers and nothing will happen." Moreno-Ocampo says the big powers feared that the ICC's obsession with Darfur would get in the way of a peace deal between the politically dominant north and the oil-rich south that ended two decades of civil war in Sudan. The Sudanese took their cue and decided to reject notification...
...Moreno-Ocampo was desperate to get the warrants delivered. Finally, around May 2007, he solicited the help of an Arab ambassador who came up with a face-saving solution for the Sudanese government in this diplomatic game of tag. Khartoum officials received a DHL envelope with the warrants, signed the receipt and returned it unopened. Haroun has still not been taken into custody...
...Sudanese were confirming to other people involved in the crimes that they were protected," says Moreno-Ocampo. International diplomats seemed to take no notice, let alone care. In September French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner organized a meeting of 18 foreign ministers from around the world to discuss the Darfur crisis at the U.N. Justice was not on the agenda...