11 July 2008

peace or justice [can't eat the cake]

LAT: ICC seeks warrant for the arrest of current president of Sudan on charges of genocide

"If the judges issue an arrest warrant, Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir would be the first sitting or former head of state to be charged with genocide by the 6-year-old international court in The Hague...

Sudan probably will not turn over its leader if a warrant is issued. Sudan has ignored arrest warrants issued last year for an official and a rebel leader, and even promoted the official, Ahmed Haroun, to oversee humanitarian affairs for the people he is charged with helping displace in Darfur...

Moreno-Ocampo will have to show that the systematic killings in Darfur were ordered by Bashir with the specific intent to eliminate the Massalit, Zaghawa and Fur groups on the basis of their ethnicity.

The government claims that the conflict was triggered by rebels from those groups, and that the government and allied militias responded in self-defense. Any casualties occurred in the course of a counter- insurgency operation, and in intertribal warfare, officials have repeatedly said."

NYT: potential fallout

"The indictment of a sitting head of state in a war-torn country would not be unprecedented: Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia were both charged by international war crimes courts while in office."

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