Sudanese President could be tried for genocide

BY SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

BRUSSELS

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied this week for a warrant of arrest for Sudanese President Omar Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur.

These are the first charges of genocide and the first charges against a head of state to be brought before the ICC – and the application has profound implications for Robert Mugabe, as the ICC is acting against a sitting President on grounds that could be applied to Mugabe.

The judges will now have to weigh the Prosecutor’s evidence and decide – a process that could take some months – whether to issue the arrest warrant.

Crisis Group President Gareth Evans said that the international community now faced a hard policy choice in balancing risk and opportunity: “The Sudanese governing regime has until now utterly failed in its responsibility to protect its own people. The judgement call the Security Council now has to make is whether Khartoum can be most effectively pressured to stop the violence and build a new Sudan by simply letting the Court process proceed, or – after assessing the regime’s initial response, and continuing to monitor it thereafter – by suspending that process in the larger interests of peace”.

In a report released today, ENOUGH Executive Director John Norris, Co-Chair

John Prendergast, and Research Associate David Sullivan argued that the call to arrest Bashir was not only based on sound evidence, but could be a step towards peace.

“The status quo in Sudan is one of the deadliest in the world. Until there is a consequence for the commission of genocide, it will continue. This action introduces a cost, finally, into the equation,” says Prendergast.

Using examples of past indictments of war criminals Slobodan Milosevic during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, and of Charles Taylor in 2003 in Liberia, the report argues that introducing accountability for crimes against humanity can break the cycle of impunity and improve prospects for peace in seemingly intractable conflicts.