Raphael Tenthani
Independent Foreign Service, PRETORIA NEWS
The prosecutor-elect of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has dispelled “perceptions” that the Hague-based court is there to punish only Africans.
“A lot of it is only perception,” Fatou Bensouda said yesterday at an Open Society conference being held in Cape Town. “The perception is a dangerous thing; it’s giving the impression that the only place ICC is working is in Africa.”
She added: “There are some elements that want this perception to persist.”
Most African leaders complain that since its inception in 2002 the ICC has targeted only African leaders. At a 2009 summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the AU passed a resolution calling on the UN Security Council to defer an ICC indictment against Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir.
At a summit the next year in Kampala, Uganda, the AU instructed its member states not to arrest al-Bashir and turned down a request by the ICC to establish an office in Addis Ababa to liaise with the AU to discuss its accusation that the ICC was picking on Africa.
SA, Botswana and now Zambia are the exceptions, all having said they would arrest him if he set foot on their territories.
Now Malawi’s new president, Joyce Banda, has described al-Bashir as “an economic risk” and asked the AU not to invite him to the next AU summit in Malawi in July.
Al-Bashir visited Malawi without incident when the late Bingu wa Mutharika was president but Banda has changed the country’s policy.
The AU is now proposing to create a tribunal with powers to adjudicate grave crimes such as war crimes and genocide, which the ICC addresses.
Reacting to this proposal in Cape Town, Bensouda – who is from Gambia, said she hoped the proposed African tribunal was not being created to shield war criminals, saying the African court must not be a “haven for criminals”.
Bensouda, 50, who has been ICC deputy prosecutor since 2004, soon takes over from Luis Moreno-Ocampo – an Argentine who was heavily criticised by African leaders for targeting Africans.
But she said Africans needed to understand the workings of the ICC.
“The ICC is not a court of first instruction,” she said. “It is a court of last resort. I am trying with my team to work with Africans so that they understand the role of ICC.”
read more here:
Categories: Africa
Those are exactly the perceptions that the Kenyan 4 who have been taken to the ICC, have. They are trying their best to have these trials done back here in Africa and I suspect they believe that they would have and easier time of it if tried here.
Re our ‘friend’ further up north, I believe that my country is ‘sympathetic’ to him simply by association and will not arrest him if he sets foot here.
But, just to make the ICC to seem more ‘just’ in the eyes of Africa, wouldn’t it be appropriate to have the non-African criminals against humanity be prosecuted with the same single minded zeal and purpose?