IJCentral: International Justice Central

The International Criminal Court’s judges on Monday charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with orchestrating a bloody campaign of genocide against Darfur’s three main ethnic groups, the first time the Hague-based court has accused a sitting head of state of committing the most egregious international crime.

The three-judge pretrial chamber issued a formal arrest warrant for Bashir—the second time it has done so—on three counts of genocide. They include the crime of targeted mass killing, the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of a target group, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. al-Bashir acted with specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” the judges concluded.

The decision provided a degree of vindication to the United States, which has stood largely alone in characterizing the killing in Darfur as genocide. It also gave a boost to the court’s Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose pursuit of the Sudanese leader has generated intense opposition from other African and Arab leaders. Moreno-Ocampo suffered a setback this month when his case against another alleged war criminal, the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, was suspended for a second time.

Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, dismissed Monday’s ruling as a politically motivated effort to undercut prospects for peace in Sudan and vowed never to surrender Bashir. “We condemn this in this strongest terms; it will only harden our resolve,” he said in an interview. “This court’s objective is to destroy chances for peace in Sudan; we’re not going to be bothered by it.”

Moreno-Ocampo said he welcomed the decision, which essentially reverses a previous ruling by the pretrial chamber to reject the genocide charges. He said the new ruling honors the victims of the mass killing in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan. It may impose new obligations on states that have signed the Genocide Convention, including the United States, to cooperate with the court in its effort to arrest Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo added.

The court issued a previous arrest warrant against Bashir in March 2009, on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sudan, which has never ratified the treaty establishing the criminal court, has refused to surrender Bashir, who was reelected this year in a U.N.-backed election to a five-year term.

The violence in Darfur began in early 2003 when two rebel groups took up arms against Sudan’s Islamic government, citing a legacy of bias against Darfur’s ethnic tribes. In response, Khartoum organized local Arab militias, the Janjaweed, to help crush the resistance and its followers. The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 civilians died as a result of violence or hardships brought on by the forced displacement of nearly 2 million Darfurians.

source: The Washington Post

June 12 (Reuters) - Member states at a Kampala review conference of the International Criminal Court have agreed on how the court could investigate crimes of state aggression, such as an invasion or an attack on another nation.

Below are questions and answers on the move and what it means for the ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes court.

HOW IS SUCH A CRIME DEFINED?

The crime of aggression was included in the 1998 Rome Statute which set up the court, listing aggression crimes along with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as one of the four grave crimes the ICC has jurisdiction over.

It is broadly defined as the use of force that manifestly breaches the United Nations charter and includes an invasion, a bombardment, port blockade or a country allowing a state to use its territory to attack a third nation.

WHAT WAS DECIDED?

Delegates decided that the Security Council, the ICC and states should all have a role in deciding whether an investigation into an act of aggression should take place.

But the compromise deal gives the court at least seven years before it would gain the authority to prosecute the crime of waging an aggressive war and it depends on further agreement between ICC member states before taking effect.

That agreement cannot take place before January 1, 2017.

WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS?

Allowing the ICC to prosecute state aggression risks involving the court in political disputes between states because a decision to go to war can be an inherently political decision.

Observers also say allowing ICC jurisdiction over aggression could arm critics who say the court is a political jurisdiction.

The United States, which is not a member of the court, is also wary its troops could be prosecuted for the use of force in trying to end war crimes the ICC is mandated to prosecute.

It has argued that there are uncertainties and ambiguities in the definition of the crime of aggression and that judges would find it difficult to reach a ruling.

Japan warned that the deal amending the Rome Statute that set up the court is based on a “dubious legal foundation” and raised concerns non-member states are shielded from being investigated.

Some critics say the court is too young to take on the political risks as it is still trying to fully establish itself.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

The deal gives a limited extension to the court’s reach by allowing it to prosecute the crime of waging an aggressive war.

Proponents said the deal avoided giving control to the U.N. Security Council over the court’s authority in respect to aggression crimes after earlier warning that giving the council control over such probes could reduce the court’s independence.

The deal also gives the court at least seven years to strengthen itself and prepare for its new powers.

Observers say the crime of aggression is based on well-established international law and if the ICC had the power to prosecute aggression this could serve as a strong deterrent.

Enabling the ICC to investigate aggression could benefit both powerful and weaker states by affording better protection against one state from being invaded while protecting a powerful state from being turned into an aggressor by criminal leaders.

While the court has the powers to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, some observers say the court is incomplete if it does not have the jurisdiction to proseute state aggression, which often leads to war crimes.

HOW WOULD INVESTIGATIONS BE TRIGGERED?

The agreement stipulates that the U.N. Security Council would have first say in whether an investigation into an act of aggression should take place.

Other options at the Kampala conference for triggering an investigation had initially included a vote of the U.N. General Assembly, a ruling at the International Court of Justice in The Hague or a ruling handed down by ICC judges.

Eventually, delegates decided that either the Security Council, the ICC or state referral would have the power to trigger a probe.

WHAT NOW?

Member states will need to decide after January 1, 2017 on the entering into force of the court’s new jurisdiction.

But state parties can also “opt-out” of allowing the ICC to have jurisdiction by lodging a declaration with the court. States that opt-out must reconsider the declaration.

Source: Reuters
(Reporting by Aaron Gray-Block; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Crusading judge who challenged Pinochet could be barred for 20 years after far right bring charges against him

To his supporters abroad, Baltasar Garzón is a hero, a legal crusader who has dared to investigate the abuses of right-wing Latin American dictatorships, starting with the 1998 arrest of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.

To many in Spain, the 54-year-old high court judge, forever flanked by bodyguards, is his country’s gutsiest watchdog, the nemesis of drug lords, corrupt politicians and violent Basque separatists. But after two decades of crusading, Mr Garzón has also attracted criticism for what some see as his cavalier, headline-grabbing indictments, including one against Osama bin Laden. And now his detractors are having their day.

Mr Garzón was charged yesterday with abusing his powers by launching Spain’s first-ever investigation into Franco-era abuses – namely the forced disappearance of 114,000 victims on the losing Republican side of the war. In a 14-page ruling, Spanish Supreme Court investigating magistrate Luciano Varela charged Mr Garzón with recklessly violating a 1977 amnesty law that shielded members of the Franco regime from legal persecution.

“This is a sad day for justice,” said Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory, which has led a volunteer drive to exhume the mass graves of Republican victims. In an interview on national radio, Mr Silva blamed the decision to prosecute Mr Garzón on the ultra-conservative leanings of the Spanish Supreme Court, which, he said, had failed to evolve since Franco’s time.

Mr Garzón is expected to face trial next month. If he is found guilty, he could be barred from the bench for up to 20 years. “I will continue to defend my absolute innocence,” he said last month when an appeal was rejected.

The lawsuit is one of three now pending against the judge, one of which takes aim at his corruption inquiry into the opposition Popular Party. It was brought before the Supreme Court by three extreme-right groups, including the Falange de las Jons, a modern splinter group of the Franco-era fascist party of the same name.

“It’s like the end of a farce,” said Francisco Espinosa, a historian who served on an advisory committee for the investigation. “The same people that participated actively in the failed coup of 23 February 1981 and in the repression under investigation are precisely the ones bringing the complaint, and the Supreme Court, instead of shelving it, gives the green light.”

One of the especially bizarre by-products of the lawsuit, Mr Espinosa added, is that the ultra-right groups now have access to reams of testimony by victims’ families. “There are families who have asked to withdraw their information before it falls into the hands of these people,” Mr Espinosa said.

Mr Garzón is expected to be removed from his judicial post until the verdict – to the delight of the high-ranking members of the opposition Popular Party he had been investigating and the satisfaction of his critics, who sarcastically call him the “super judge”. The conservative daily ABC described the saga as “the chronicle of a professional death foretold” – the logical result of many ego-driven investigations in which the judge supposedly “skidded on ice”. “Garzón isn’t going to get out of this one,” the Falange leader, Jorge Garrido, gloated to El País.

Many in legal circles are outraged, however, by what they consider an orchestrated attempt by the judge’s enemies to remove him from the bench. “If he is eventually suspended, it will be one of the most serious defeats for Spanish justice during the democracy,” Carlos Jiménez Villarejo, a former state anti-corruption prosecutor, said. Mr Villarejo has organised Garzón tributes throughout the country, which have attracted legal scholars, artists and intellectuals such as Nobel winner José Saramago.

Mr Garzón has used Spain’s “universal jurisdiction” principle to take on thorny – and diplomatically awkward – cases ranging from Argentina’s “Dirty War” executions to tortures at Guantánamo Bay. But he embarked on the most perilous investigation of his career in October 2008 when he rattled the ghosts of Spain’s bloody past. The crusading magistrate accused former dictator Francisco Franco and 34 of his former generals and ministers of crimes against humanity in relation to the 114,000 forced disappearances and ordered the exhumation of 19 mass graves.

At first, Mr Garzón was merely accused of opening old wounds and violating the so-called “pact of forgetting” that marked Spain’s peaceful transition to democracy. Under pressure from state prosecutors, he eventually passed responsibility for opening the graves to provincial courts (who have largely ignored the matter). But last year, anger at the investigation morphed into concrete form: the accusation of “prevarication,” or ruling with knowing disregard for the law.

Mr Garzón argued that amnesty laws do not apply to crimes against humanity, and several international human rights groups support that view. “We are truly scandalised,” Giulia Tamayo, head of research for Amnesty International in Spain, said. “The UN Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly warned the Spanish government that amnesty laws were not applicable to crimes against humanity, but the Spanish authorities continue to hinder the victims’ quest for justice and reparation. Now the only judge who wanted to abide by international law is being made to pay for it.”

“No other country has gone as far as to prosecute a judge that tried to investigate such crimes,” she added.

Mr Garzón’s defence had lined up a cast of international legal experts, including Carla del Ponte, former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and Eugenio Raúl Zaffaronni, the Argentine judge who in 2005 voided the country’s amnesty law. But the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that it would not admit their testimony. The defence is appealing against the decision.

But the people most upset are the families of the victims. Mr Silva’s Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory has petitioned the court for the right to participate in the criminal proceedings. “There are many families who are depressed because of what is happening to Garzón,” Mr Silva said. “When he is placed on the stand, thousands of men and women who are awaiting justice will sit beside him.”

source:  The Independent

10 September 2009 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today expressed the continued support of the United Nations for the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which he said has become the “centrepiece” of the global criminal justice system since it came into existence only several years ago.
“The establishment of the International Criminal Court was a landmark in the efforts of the international community to enforce the applicability of international humanitarian law, and to advance the cause of justice and the rule of law on a universal scale,” Mr. Ban said in a message to the Consultative Conference on International Criminal Justice.

The ICC is an independent, permanent court that investigates and prosecutes people accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and is based on a treaty known as the Rome Statue. To date, 100 States are party to the Statute, which has nearly 140 signatories.

The efforts by the UN to further the causes of peace, development and human rights are closely connected to the work of the ICC, Mr. Ban noted, adding that the world body stands ready to do all that is needed to “facilitate the Court’s noble and important mission.”

In the message, delivered by UN Legal Counsel Patricia O’Brien, the Secretary-General pointed out the increased support for the idea that justice must be an essential part of post-conflict strategies to ensure a sustainable peace.

This could take the form of international accountability mechanisms, boosting national accountability methods, and setting up possible non-judicial forums such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, he said.

Since the Rome Statue entered into force in 2002, Mr. Ban said, “the activities of the Court and its Prosecutor have had a discernible effect on potential perpetrators of international crimes.”

Currently, four situations – the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan – are under investigation by the ICC Prosecutor.

originally from UN News Center

UNITED NATIONS — The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said Wednesday he is collecting information on possible war crimes by NATO forces and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Luis Moreno Ocampo said he is also conducting preliminary inquiries on possible war crimes in Georgia, Colombia, Kenya, Ivory Coast, and by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Ocampo told a briefing on the emerging international criminal justice system that he plans to open four new investigations in the next three years, but he refused to disclose any details.

The International Criminal Court, which began operating in 2002, is the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. Afghanistan is one of the 110 countries that have ratified the Rome treaty which created the tribunal and are therefore legally bound by its provisions.

Under the treaty, the court can step in only when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice themselves for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Ocampo said it has been “very difficult” to collect precise information about some of the alleged crimes, but his office has benefited from reports produced by non-governmental organizations who “arrived before us and provided information to us.”

He said he has requested information from human rights groups and groups inside Afghanistan as well as the Afghan government – and would be “very open” to information from foreign governments.

Taliban fighters have been accused of many brutal killings. There have also been some accusations of U.S. forces in Afghanistan using excessive force and torturing prisoners.

He confirmed that allegations involved both the Taliban and NATO forces.

The Clinton administration signed the Rome Treaty establishing the court, but the Bush administration rescinded the U.S. signature, arguing that the court could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecution of American troops.

Asked whether any NATO soldier is now a potential target of the court if he or she commits a war crime in a country under the court’s jurisdiction, he replied that NATO’s legal adviser was at the court’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands last week discussing this issue.

In the training NATO is doing, Ocampo said, it is explaining to colonels that in the future they could end up before the court if they commit atrocities.

“That is the most important (thing) because these massive atrocities are planned. So if those who are planning know they will be prosecuted, they will do something different,” he said.

reposted from the Huffington Post

** I’m twittering the hearing at: http://twitter.com/bechamilton for those who can’t catch the live webcast**

There is a hearing at the ICC this morning which may seem to be on an obscure legal point to the general public, but is actually of significance to the global system of justice established by the Rome Statute.

The hearing concerns a challenge to the admissibility of the case against DRC warlord, Germain Katanga.

Charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and rape, were confirmed against Katanga by Pre-Trial Chamber I while I was at the court last year. His trial (jointly with Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui) is due to commence in September this year. However, in a motion filed in February, Katanga’s defense team (led by the impressive British barrister, David Hooper) are challenging whether the case against Katanga is admissible (re-stated in plain English: Does the ICC have the authority to hear this case or should his case be dealt with by the DRC’s judicial system?).

Under the system established by the Rome Statute, the ICC is a court of last resort. By design, the drafters of the Rome Statute decided that national judicial systems should have primacy, and only if these systems were unable or unwilling to conduct genuine investigations and prosecutions would the ICC come into play. In legal terms this is “the principle of complementarity.” In practical terms it means that the system established by the Rome Statute aims to encourage justice at the local level first - with justice being undertaken at the international legal only when the local system fails.

I personally think that complementarity it is a very positive design feature of the Rome Statute that is not nearly well enough understood by those who lump the ICC into the same category as the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia (which do not operate on the complementarity principle). As ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo put it when he came to office: “The efficiency of the International Criminal Court should not be measured by the number of cases that reach the court or by the content of its decisions. Quite on the contrary, because of the exceptional character of this institution, the absence of trials led by this court as a consequence of the regular functioning of national institutions, would be its major success.”

So why then is the Prosecution fighting the Defense on the admissibility of this case before the ICC?

In essence it comes down to a fight over the meaning of the word “case.”  In this morning’s hearing I expect we will see the Prosecution argue that the case against Katanga was not being investigated or prosecuted by the DRC, and they will do so using the definition of the word “case” that Pre-Trial Chamber I established several years ago in Lubanga - Namely that a case involves the same person and same conduct:  “. . . for a case arising from an investigation of a situation to be inadmissible, national proceedings must encompass both the person and the conduct which is the subject of the case before the court.” (Decision of Pre-Trial Chamber I, 24 Feb. 2006, para 37). Therefore, the fact that the DRC were investigating Katanaga is not, in and of itself, enough to make the case inadmissible. It would only be inadmissible if they were also investigating him for the same conduct as in the ICC case.

By contrast, the Defense has argued in its submissions that this interpretation of the word “case” is too narrow. They also argue that the DRC authorities would have started looking at the conduct the ICC is now looking at if the ICC had not begun its investigation.

My view, for what it’s worth, is that given the Chamber’s definition of the word “case” in Lubanga, the Prosecution’s argument is solid as a matter of law. (Moreover, with my cynics hat on I have to wonder what’s the likelihood that a panel of Judges deciding they no longer have the power to adjudicate a case that they have already confirmed the charges in??).  However Hooper rarely makes a vacuous argument, and there are some policy consequences flowing from the Chamber’s initial decision to define the word “case” as narrowly as they did in Lubanga that Hooper is the first to really draw the Court’s attention to.

In short - for anyone interested in the balance of local vs. international justice, this hearing is worth paying attention to. You can see it livestreamed through the Court’s site from 10am (Dutch time) this morning in English or French.

re-posted by IJCentral from Bec Hamilton

What was the UN Security Council (UNSC) thinking when it issued Resolution 1593 in 2005, referring the ongoing situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?  Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo took the case, conducted a 20-month investigation, came back with evidence, and requested arrest warrants - he did his job, in accordance with the justice mandate of the ICC.  At briefings he has subsequently given every 6 months, he has updated the UNSC on the progress of the investigation.  After obtaining arrest warrants from the ICC judges for Sudanese government Minister Ahmad Haroun, Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, and President Omar al-Bashir, he has consistently urged the UNSC and the international community represented at the UN, to execute the warrants. Instead the UNSC has balked at following through, and the African Union and the Arab League have rallied to support al-Bashir. 

Now there is even the possibility that the Obama administration might consider appeasing al-Bashir, a disgraceful approach if it happens (I suspect that Obama’s desire for dialogue with Iran, with its ties to Sudan, would have something to do with a rapprochement with al-Bashir).  So what did the UNSC and the international community expect when they asked the Prosecutor to investigate?  Did they have any plan for what to do if he came back with evidence of crimes against humanity?  They don’t seem to have thought that far ahead, or simply issued Resolution 1593 for political expediency.  But now they must act - we as global citizens must pressure our leaders to uphold the rule of law.  If you live in the U.S., write to your congressperson and President Obama and let them know you want the ICC warrants to be acted upon!  And citizens around the world, IJCentral members, send an email to your Minister of Foreign Affairs urging them to support global rule of law!

At a recent post-screening discussion of documentary film “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”, a Darfuri journalist said that amongst Darfuris, the surprise is not that the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President al-Bashir charging him with crimes against humanity in Darfur, or that al-Bashir expelled 13 humanitarian groups from the Darfur Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. The real surprise for Darfuris was that humanitarian organizations and the international community seemed taken by surprise by al-Bashir’s actions after the warrant was issued. As the Darfuri journalist, Tajeldin Abdalla Adam from Radio Dabanga said, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo publicly requested the warrants; al-Bashir publicly said he would retaliate; so why wasn’t the international community making preparations to respond to this and to preemptively pressure the Sudanese regime to curtail its actions? Al-Bashir and his National Congress Party have been at it for 20 years, presiding over the tragedy of southern Sudan (2 million victims), arming and giving safe haven to the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda (20,000 victims, 1.5 million displaced), and now Darfur (200,000 victims, over 2 million displaced). How long are we supposed to wait? It is time for the international community to definitively isolate President al-Bashir, and make it clear to any of his potential successors that the rogue state tactics of the National Congress Party regime will no longer be tolerated.

Accountability is not something a constituency should have to beg from its government.  A lack of transparency and a paper trail of secrets is not something that people who fight for their country and defend their democracy deserve. Alas, these types of abuses of power and abstractions of the law have become so commonplace over the last eight years that it’s hard to remember where we started and how we got into this mess.

With the recent release of the Bush administration terrorism memos we are beginning to learn first-hand what many Americans and people around the world suspected had terribly gone wrong with this manipulation of governance.  During the aftermath of (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) the Bush administration decided it would be a opportune moment enact a complete deconstruction of social liberties and give itself the type of impunity only sought after by the types of despots and dictators that the American government has long vowed to dethrone and displace. 

In 1998 we saw the indictment of Augusto Pinochet by the Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzón for crimes against humanity. On April 7, 2009 the world saw former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori found guilty of human right abuses and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Finally, on March 4th 2009 the ICC issued an unprecedented arrest warrant for sitting head of state Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir on counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Obviously there is a strong trend afoot in the international community to stop the egregious abuses of power and the murder of innocent civilian populations under the threat of war. We are witnessing a gradual acceptance of an international rule of law, but there is still much momentum to be built.  Not that there hasn’t been an acceptance since the Nuremberg trials as a result of World War II or after the signing of the Rome Statue, but I mean the active and engaged acceptance that brings crimes to the surface of public opinion and furthermore its criminals to court.

In March a Spanish court has moved forward into opening an official criminal investigation against top administration officials in the former Bush administration including former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former Justice Department Lawyer John C. Yoo for allegedly violating international law “by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba”.  This bold step is led by none other than Baltasar Garzón, and is a necessary beginning towards accountability for the United States. Although it may be unnecessary for the United States to have to export its alleged criminals, it does seem imminent that something must be done about them. The past eight years of American involvement in foreign and domestic politics has not only been an embarrassment but a potentially ruthless and criminal interpretation of the law and must not go unpunished.

Spain’s Attorney General has already encouraged Garzón to drop his investigation into the Bush administration and President Barack Obama has assured C.I.A. operatives involved in the torture described in the terrorism memo’s “that they would not be prosecuted for actions that their superiors told them were legal.”  Are the people of the United States going to step-up and make sure its leaders are accountable for their actions?  Are they going to vow against impunity and support a global rule of law? 

Much hay has been made since the ICC announced the arrest warrants for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, about the fact that the warrants were issued for crimes against humanity (5 counts) and war crimes (2) but not for genocide, the third category of crime that Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had included in his request for the warrants on July 14, 2008.  Many people that I respect in the international justice field have seized on this decision by the ICC judges as if it represents some kind of a failure for the Prosecutor because they thought he should not have accused al-Bashir with genocide in the first place, or because they thought it was too controversial, or are disappointed that the judges decided against issuing a warrant for genocide.  Aren’t these critics satisfied with crimes against humanity and war crimes?  Here’s the definition of crimes against humanity from the Rome Statue, the founding document of the ICC:

“Particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder, extermination, torture, rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion.”

Whatever the reasons, it really feels like splitting hairs, or finding the negative in what I see as huge positive step forward for humankind.  We finally have a Court that is capable of issuing arrest warrants for a sitting head of state - that’s amazing.  As former ICC Senior Trial Attorney says in the film “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court”, the Sudan/Darfur case is the kind of case the Court was made for, to hold leaders of countries to account when they commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  As the Prosecutor said at the press conference last week announcing the warrants, the judges considered his requests and decided not to issue the warrant for genocide - this shows a well functioning and independent court, where the judges don’t simply rubber stamp what the Prosecutor gives them.  One of the judges had a dissenting opinion, but the other two decided against - the Prosecutor said he would review their arguments against and perhaps file an appeal.  So let’s focus on the positive aspects of what the ICC is doing, and provide constructive criticism when appropriate.

A genocide charge may not be hanging over al-Bashir’s head at the moment, but crimes against humanity and war crimes are, and let’s focus on that.