Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir
A South African judge has ordered authorities to prevent Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, from leaving the country because of an international order for his arrest, human rights activists said yesterday.
It was unclear whether authorities would heed efforts to have al-Bashir detained on behalf of the International Criminal Court, if he is indeed in South Africa. South African media said he was attending a summit of the African Union, which has asked the International Criminal Court to stop proceedings against sitting presidents and will not compel any member states to arrest a leader on behalf of the court
Al-Bashir’s exact whereabouts were unknown yesterday. He has not been seen in public at the Johannesburg meeting. He has traveled abroad before and local authorities had not detained him at the behest of the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Southern Africa Litigation Centre, a rights group, said it secured a judge’s ruling that the government must stop al-Bashir from leaving South Africa while the court hears arguments for his arrest for alleged genocide and other crimes.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said South Africa is under a legal obligation to arrest al-Bashir and surrender him to the court. Her office has been in touch with South African authorities on the Sudanese president’s reported visit.
If al-Bashir is not arrested, the matter will be reported to the court’s assembly of states and the United Nations Security Council, which first referred the case of Sudan’s Darfur region to the International Criminal Court in 2005, she said.
The charges against al-Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, stem from reported atrocities in the conflict in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in the government’s campaign, according to United Nations figures.
He has visited Malawi, Kenya, Chad and Congo in the last few years, all of which are ICC member states. The ICC doesn’t have any powers to compel countries to arrest him and can only tell them they have a legal obligation to do it. Lynsey Chutel, Johannesburg, AP
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