The folks at the ICC probably mean well but their empty gesture is likely just going to result in more death:
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and other crimes for a five-year campaign of violence in the country’s Darfur region.
The warrant, if issued by the ICC, would make al-Bashir the first sitting president to be indicted by the ICC for genocide.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presented his evidence against al-Bashir to the judges at the Hague in the Netherlands on Monday. The judges must now decide whether to issue the warrant, and it is widely expected that they will; the judges have approved all 11 of Moreno-Ocampo’s previous submissions to the court.
In his request, Moreno-Ocampo says there are reasonable grounds to believe that al-Bashir bears criminal responsibility for five counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity, and two counts of war crimes.
And in Sudan:
In Khartoum, a crowd of about 2,000 people greeted al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, when he arrived for an emergency meeting of his Cabinet Sunday to discuss the charges.
When he saw the crowd, al-Bashir climbed onto a pickup truck and pumped his fist in the air, whipping the group into a frenzy.
Some held signs saying, “You are joking… Ocamp-who?” and “Death to America.”
Imagine fighting the war on terror through this court. It gets worse:
Sudan’s ruling party issued a statement Sunday predicting “more violence and blood” in Darfur if the country’s president is indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide, state media reported.
Meanwhile, Iran is insisting that it isn’t al-Bashir’s fault:
Britain and the United States fanned the flames of war in southern and western Sudan with the goal of eventually partitioning the country into three states to facilitate the Zionist regime’s efforts to establish a presence in the Upper Nile region and Ethiopia.
The Sudanese government had long warned about the Zionist regime’s plots in Africa, and especially in Ethiopia.
Sudan’s vigilance about the Western and Zionist plots prompted the extra-regional powers to employ a variety of methods to isolate the Khartoum government.
