The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC [2]) Feb. 3 reversed a Pre-Trial Chamber decision that denied the application for an arrest warrant on genocide charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir [3]. The reversal was procedural, and did not address the question of whether al-Bashir is responsible for genocide.
In its March 2009 decision, the Pre-Trial Chamber required the prosecution to demonstrate al-Bashir's genocidal intent using the "proof by inference" standard. The Appeals Chamber held that the standard used was inappropriate for the arrest warrant phase, but declined to actually order the Pre-Trial Chamber to issue a genocide warrant for al-Bashir, as requested by ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The case has now been remanded back to the Pre-Trial Chamber to reconsider whether there was "reasonable grounds to believe" that al-Bashir acted with genocidal intent.
ICC prosecutors appealed [4] the decision not to charge al-Bashir with genocide in July. The warrant, which charges [5] al-Bashir with seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been controversial, with Egypt, Sudan, the African Union and others calling for the proceedings against al-Bashir to be delayed, and African Union leaders agreeing [6] not to cooperate with the ruling. Al-Bashir is accused of systematically targeting and purging the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups from their lands in Darfur [7] under the pretext of counterinsurgency since 2003. (Jurist [8], Feb. 3)
See our last post on Sudan [9].
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