South African court bans Omar al-Bashir from leaving country over ICC arrest bid

A South African court has banned Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir from leaving the country pending a decision on whether he should be arrested.

Mr Bashir is wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court, who called on South Africa to arrest him when he arrived in the country for an African Union summit on Saturday night.

The head of one of Africa’s most repressive regimes, Mr Bashir is wanted for complicity in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in his country’s western Darfur province.

Sudan’s foreign minister told journalists the 71-year-old was “a leading president and a member of the African Union, and he will continue attending summits wherever they are”.

But as he joined a group of the union’s 54 member countries for an official photo call, an urgent application for him to be detained was heard at Pretoria’s High Court.

Lawyers for human rights groups argued that as a signatory to the ICC, the South Africans were legally obliged to enact the two arrest warrants the Hague-based court has issued for him.
Lawyers for the government argued that the ICC warrant was not enforceable.
It emerged that the government quietly approved a legal loophole last week, giving diplomatic immunity to any leader or delegate attending the AU summit.
Judge Hans Fabricuis, sitting at Pretoria’s high court, granted the state until Monday morning to prepare its response. He issued an interim order that the Sudanese president should not leave the country.
“President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan is prohibited from leaving the Republic of South Africa until a final order is made in this application, and the respondents (the South African government) are directed to take all necessary steps to prevent him from doing so,” he said.
Kamal Ismail, Sudan’s Foreign Minister, said the president he had no plans to leave.
“He will return when the main session is over. This could be today or tomorrow. I will not go into the details,” he said. “Until now, things are normal and there is no risk to His Excellency the president.”
Other African leaders attending the summit told The Telegraph they had no issue with Mr Bashir’s invitation.
“It’s no problem for me,” Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s newly-elected president, said.
Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in 2011 and with whom it has tense relations, said his presence had “nothing to do with me”, adding: “Ask the South Africans. They invited him.”
Local media reported that prosecutors had issued instructions for Mr Bashir’s arrest, only to be overruled by the government.
South Africa’s ambassador to The Netherlands also met the ICC’s presiding judge on Friday to argue that because of a “lack of clarity” in the arrest warrant’s terms and “competing obligations” South Africa faced, Mr Bashir should be allowed to visit.
The ICC rejected the claim. “There exists no ambiguity or uncertainty with respect to the obligation of the Republic of South Africa to immediately arrest and surrender Omar Al Bashir to the court,” it said in a statement.
Despite warning off Mr Bashir off from visiting the country in 2009 because it would have to arrest him, South Africa’s governing African National Congress now appear to be siding with those in the African Union who have called for a mass withdrawal from the ICC.
The ANC issued a statement saying the court was “no longer useful for the purposes for which it was intended” and suggesting countries who were members of the United Nations should no longer be obliged to sign up to the court.
“Countries, mainly in Africa and Eastern Europe, who due to their unwavering commitment to upholding human rights and universal justice, have elected to be signatories to the ICC, continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC with Sudan being the latest example,” the ANC said.

Source: The Telegraph