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ICC's Ocampo Dismisses Sudan's Process, Sudan
Dismisses Ocampo, of Moral Damages
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
August 11 -- Less than a week after
Sudan belatedly named a special prosecutor for Darfur, the prosecutor
of the International
Criminal Court called this no more than a cover-up. While that
may be true, Luis Moreno-Ocampo's fast dismissal raises the question of
who
decides when a nation's justice system is credible.
When Inner City
Press asked Moreno-Ocampo why
all his cases have been in Africa, he said he had considered
Colombia, but
found their justice system credible. Now there are calls, how ever
cynical one
may view them, to refer the president of Georgia to the ICC in The
Hague, for
what Russia
alleges is genocide in South Ossetia. One imagines that
Moreno-Ocampo
would deemed Georgia's legal system credible. But again, who decides?
On Monday
at UN headquarters, Inner City Press asked Sudan's Ambassador
Abdalmahmoud
Abdalhaleem Mohamed about Moreno-Ocampo's comments. "We have been
saying,
that man is not credible," he answered. "He wants to beforehand
judge. Every day he is putting oil on fire. We will hold him
responsible for
the very irresponsible statements he makes. You can quote me."
Moreno-Ocampo, moral damages
not shown
Moreno-Ocampo on Monday was in Senegal, apparently
trying to lobby
President Wade to back off his public position that the legal process
against
Al Bashir should be frozen. In 2005 as
Darfur was referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council, Moreno-Ocampo
was in
Cape Town, taking a female journalist's car keys and saying, to get
them you
must sleep with me, as found by an International Labor Organization
panel which
found Moreno-Ocampo engaged in retaliation and ordered the
payment of moral
damages.
Even some who generally support
holding leaders personally accountable for deaths now are pointed not
only to
Article 16 of the ICC's Rome Statute, which provides for freezing of
indictments, but also to Article 42.3, which requires that "the
Prosecutor
and the Deputy Prosecutors shall be persons of high moral character."
Moreno-Ocampo
may be lobbying on this front as well, in Senegal and elsewhere.
The situation is that those who support the ICC feel compelled to
support or cover up for Moreno-Ocampo, feeling that he is weakened, the
Court is weakened. But impunity at the ICC undermines it. It is
possible, perhaps even necessary, for those who support international
criminal law to not make excuses for Moreno-Ocampo.
Moreno-Ocampo's
fast dismissal stands in contrast
to the response
gleened from Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson on August 6, 2008 --
Inner City Press: the Government
in Khartoum has now appointed, as had been requested as part of this AU
plan,
has appointed a Special Prosecutor for the situation in Darfur. Does the UN think that’s a positive step?
Spokesperson: Well, let's see
what's happening. Every move made by a
national Government, we
cannot give an opinion on every single move made by that.
Of course it is a positive step.
Inner City Press: The reason I
ask is because it's also reported that Al-Arabiya is reporting that,
quoting UN
sources, that Ban Ki-moon prefers freezing any arrest warrant against
President
[Omar] al-Bashir. So, I'm wondering, is
that not true?
Spokesperson: Well, Al-Arabiya,
I guess, has its
sources. I cannot comment on that.
Watch
this
site. And this (on
South Ossetia), and
this --
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