Mick Hartley

It’s good to see some positive comment for a change on Bashir’s indictment before the International Criminal Court. Here’s Mark Lattimer at CiF:

The unique contribution of the ICC was to provide the mechanism for international prosecutions where crimes were committed in furtherance of a state policy or plan.

The situation in Darfur, which was referred to the ICC by the UN security council in March 2005, is such a case. Given the evidence against Bashir that his investigation has thrown up, Ocampo’s discretion is severely limited, and does not encompass guesswork about future political negotiations or judgments about which way members of the security council will vote. Nor should it. He is a prosecutor, not a diplomat, and the credibility of the ICC depends on that distinction being maintained. As well as requiring any arrest warrant to be approved by a panel of judges, the ICC’s statute provides extensive avenues to challenge a decision not to prosecute.

The prosecutor’s move was nonetheless bold. In charging Bashir with genocide, together with war crimes and crimes against humanity, he has thrown at him the most resonant crime in the ICC’s book, if not the easiest to prove. It recognises an intent to destroy the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa peoples of Darfur, an attempt which continues today in armed attacks on the 2.5 million civilians living in displacement camps and the obstruction of humanitarian assistance. One of the factors the ICC’s judges will weigh in while considering Ocampo’s request for a warrant is whether an arrest is necessary to prevent Bashir from continuing to commit his crimes….

So an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president will be a milestone in the early history of the ICC, but probably not the turning point many expect and some fear. The same can not be said for Bashir, who will come to understand that the independence of the ICC from the UN means that its decisions cannot just be rescinded by his allies on the security council. In the two recent cases where serving heads of state have faced an international indictment – Slobodan Milosevic by the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Liberia’s Charles Taylor by the special court for Sierra Leone – the diplomatic controversy quickly subsided and the indictees soon found their national power base crumbling away. Politicians do not like to be led by an international pariah, even if, or especially if, they are themselves implicated in his crimes. They were both inside a prison cell within three years.

Heads of state often make the mistake of believing too literally the legal fiction that they are the embodiment of the state. Soon, not just Bashir’s enemies but his friends too will realise that he is damaged goods. China does not need Bashir to continue doing oil deals in Sudan. He is unlikely ever to recover.

The comments at CiF don’t disappoint:

* Is Bashir’s government accused of any crimes which could not be, with at least equal justification, preferred against either of the US or British governments?…

As someone who recalls the obscenity of Milosevic being badgered and lectured in court by employees of Blair and his ilk, who allow the IDF to range over Palestine like a hungry tiger, I find these denunciations of people like Bashir (wasn’t his country actually attacked by the US using cruise missiles?) cheap and nasty.

* The question that needs to be answered is when will ICC issue warrant for another war criminal and global pariah George Bush?

* Who is going to bring the Western criminals and their Israeli satraps (or is that vice versa?) to heel?

And that’s just up to comment #7.