SUDAN's GENOCIDAL "President" al-Bashir Eludes CRIMINAL COURT! Another Example of Why Bush-Cheney Will Never Face Punishment ...
Ralph Waldo
HUMANITY' ?
There's a reason why your Chimp declined U.S. membership In the ICC.
He recognized his own criminality in his foreign policy.
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"International Court Under Unusual Fire"
"Africans Defend Sudan's Indicted Leader"
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
UNITED NATIONS -- When Luis Moreno-Ocampo charged Sudanese President
Omar Hassan al-Bashir with war crimes last year, the International
Criminal Court prosecutor was hailed by human rights advocates as the
man who could help bring justice to Darfur.
Today, Moreno-Ocampo appears to be the one on trial, with even some of
his early supporters questioning his prosecutorial strategy, his use
of facts and his personal conduct. Bashir and others have used the
controversy to rally opposition to the world's first permanent
criminal court, a challenge that may jeopardize efforts to determine
who is responsible for massive crimes in Darfur.
At issue is how to strike a balance between the quest for justice in
Darfur and the pursuit of a political settlement to end an ongoing
civil war in the western region of Sudan. In recent months, African
and Arab leaders have said the Argentine lawyer's pursuit of the
Sudanese president has undercut those peace prospects.
Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Gabon's Jean Ping, the two leaders
of the African Union, are mounting a campaign to press African states
to withdraw from the treaty body that established the international
tribunal. "The attacks against the court by African and Arab
governments in the last nine months are the most serious threat to the
ICC" since the United States declared its opposition to it in 2002,
said William Pace, who heads the Coalition for the International
Criminal Court, an alliance of 2500 organizations.
Moreno-Ocampo defended his work in a lengthy interview, saying that
his office offers the brightest hope of bringing justice to hundreds
of thousands of African victims and halting mass murder in Darfur. "It
is normal: When you prosecute people with a lot of power, you have
problems," said Moreno-Ocampo, who first gained prominence by
prosecuting Argentine generals for ordering mass murder in that
country's "dirty war."
The International Criminal Court was established in July 2002 to
prosecute perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity, building on temporary courts in Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda and
Sierra Leone.
Since he was appointed in 2003, the prosecutor has brought war crimes
charges against 13 individuals in northern Uganda, Congo, the Central
African Republic and Sudan, including a July 2008 charge against
Bashir of orchestrating genocide in Darfur. Pretrial judges approved
the prosecutors' request for an arrest warrant for Bashir on March 4
on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but rejected the
genocide charge.
The Bush administration initially opposed the court, citing concerns
of frivolous investigations of American soldiers engaged in the fight
against terrorism. But President Obama -- whose top advisers are
divided over whether Sudan continues to commit genocide -- has been
far more supportive of the court.
The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when rebel movements took
up arms against the Islamic government, citing discrimination against
the region's tribes. The prosecutor has charged that Bashir then
orchestrated a campaign of genocide that has led to the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Darfurian civilians from disease and
violence, and driven about 2 million more from their homes.
Bashir has openly defied the court, saying that it has only
strengthened his standing. "The court has been isolated and the
prosecutor stands naked," said Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood
Abdalhaleem Mohamad.
The prosecutor's case "has polarized Sudanese politics and weakened
those who occupy the middle ground of compromise and consensus," said
Rodolphe Adada, a former Congolese foreign minister who heads a joint
African Union-U.N. mission in Darfur.
In remarks to the U.N. Security Council in April, Adada challenged
Moreno-Ocampo's characterization of the situation as genocide and said
that only 130 to 150 people were dying each month in Darfur, far fewer
than the 5,000 that Moreno-Ocampo says die each month from violence
and other causes. "In purely numeric terms it is a low-intensity
conflict," Adada said.
African leaders with abysmal human rights records seek to discredit
Moreno-Ocampo because "they fear accountability" in their own
countries, said Richard Dicker, an expert on the ICC at Human Rights
Watch. Dicker concedes that Moreno-Ocampo has made missteps that have
played into the hands of the court's enemies.
In September, Human Rights Watch raised concern in a confidential memo
to the court about low staff morale and the flight of many experienced
investigators. It also cited the prosecutor's 2006 summary dismissal
of his spokesman after he filed an internal complaint alleging Moreno-
Ocampo had raped a female journalist.
A panel of ICC judges, after interviewing the woman, concluded that
the allegations were "manifestly unfounded." Then an internal
disciplinary board recommended that Moreno-Ocampo rescind the
dismissal, arguing that the prosecutor had a conflict of interest in
firing the spokesman.
An administrative tribunal at the International Labor Organization
ruled that while the spokesman's allegations were ultimately proved
wrong, he had not acted maliciously because he believed his boss had
engaged in improper behavior. It required a settlement payment of
nearly $250,000 for back pay and damages.
Moreno-Ocampo, in the interview, declined to respond to the criticism
of his personal reputation, saying, "I cannot answer unfounded
allegations."
The case against Bashir rankles many African leaders, who say it is
hypocritical. They note that the Security Council, which authorized
the Sudan probe, has three permanent members who never signed the
treaty establishing the court: the United States, Russia and China.
"The feeling we have is that it is biased," said Congo's U.N. envoy,
Atoki Ileka.
Alex de Waal, a British expert on Darfur, and Julie Flint, a writer
and human rights activist, maintain that Moreno-Ocampo is the problem.
They recently co-wrote an article in the World Affairs Journal citing
former staff members and prominent war crimes experts who are critical
of the prosecutor for not conducting witness interviews inside Darfur
and for pursuing a weak charge of genocide against Bashir.
"It is difficult to cry government-led genocide in one breath and then
explain in the next why 2 million Darfuris have sought refuge around
the principal army garrisons of their province," Andrew T. Cayley, a
British lawyer who headed the prosecutor's Darfur investigation, wrote
in the Journal of International Criminal Justice last November.
Christine Chung, a former federal prosecutor and senior trial attorney
for the prosecutor until 2007, dismissed the piece as "character
assassination" and said the prosecutor's decision to stay out of
Darfur was "in the end correct. The Sudanese government indeed
detained and tortured persons believed to be cooperating with the
ICC."
Moreno-Ocampo said he remains convinced that Bashir is committing
genocide. "I have 300 lawyers, all brilliant people, with different
opinions, but then I make the decision," he said. "I still think it's
genocide, and I will appeal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062904322.html
Embryano
pages. How appropriate! Convenient!
LEROY KNEVIL
And Darfur And 500,000 Dead Be Damned!
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World Digest
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 8, 2009, A08
Prosecutors Appeal Decision on Bashir:
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague have
appealed the tribunal's decision not to indict Sudan's president on
charges of waging genocide in Darfur, according to a document released
Tuesday. The court charged Omar Hassan al-Bashir with war crimes and
crimes against humanity in March over his alleged activities in
Darfur. But judges said there was insufficient evidence to merit a
genocide charge.
-- From News Services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070702704.html