Legal News

?His Alibi Was a Counterinsurgency. His Intent Was Genocide.?

By Dan Slater

This morning, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir joined Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia’s Charles Taylor in the category of leaders to be charged by international war crimes courts while still in office.

After linking what he called the “whole state apparatus” of Sudan to the janjaweed militias and their attacks on civilians in Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has formally requested an arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Bashir, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Moreno-Ocampo, according to the NYT, said Bashir “masterminded and implemented” a plan to destroy the three main ethnic groups in Darfur — the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. (Here’s a press release from the ICC, and more from the AP.)

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir arrives for the opening of the 8th African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)

“His motives were largely political,” said Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentinian, at a news conference at The Hague in the Netherlands. “His alibi was a counterinsurgency. His intent was genocide.” He continued: “Al-Bashir organized the destitution, insecurity and harassment of the survivors. He did not need bullets. He used other weapons: rapes, hunger and fear. As efficient, but silent.” Moreno-Ocampo said that he handed over his evidence to the three judges who will decide whether to issue an arrest warrant. An answer to the request is expected in the fall.

The NYT notes that Bashir (pictured) has scoffed at two arrest warrants the court has already issued against two other Sudanese officials, even promoting one of them to minister of humanitarian affairs.

“We will resist this,” said Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman. “Everybody in Sudan — the government, the people, even the opposition parties — are against this.” Atti called the ICC “a stooge” for Sudan’s enemies. “Nothing will happen to the U.N. because of this,” he said. “We will handle this with our legal advocates.”

As for criticism that the arrest warrant will hamper the peace process in Sudan, Moreno-Ocampo told the NYT: “Some people have said that for me to intervene at this point is shocking. I say what is going on now is shocking. Genocide is going on now and it is endangering the lives of many more people.”

Who’s Luis Moreno-Ocampo? Moreno-Ocampo, a 1978 graduate of the University of Buenos Aires law school, clerked for the Argentine Solicitor General before becoming assistant prosecutor in the so-called Trial of the Juntas — the prosecution of nine people, including three former heads of state, in the military dictatorship that ran Argentina from 1976 to 1983. It was the first prosecution of senior commanders for the mass killing of civilians since the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials. In 1992, he resigned as prosecutor, and started Moreno-Ocampo & Wortman (now Wortman Jofre-Isola). In 2003, an assembly of the ICC elected him as its first prosecutor for a term of nine years. Click here for a Newsweek Q&A with Moreno-Ocampo.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).