Sudan President under investigation for genocide

Here was a nice story. Praised in the deeply ethical supporter of human rights, The Times of Oman as a great Arab statesman (while their editor in chief Mr Al Zedjali was hobnobbing with him at the Korean-Arab summit recently - see earlier post) the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is being investigated for genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Finally. Interesting that in yesterdays Times he's refered to as Field Marshal Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Beshir, president of Sudan (their lack of capitalisation on the p in president BTW).

The Times mentioned nothing about his little ethnic cleansing progrom in Sudan of course, but simply cut and paste his speach and the Koreans talking about how they were looking forward to getting in their and extracting resources.

IHT story

When Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, reported to the United Nations Security Council last month, he painted a dire tableau of death, rape and dispossession in Darfur, saying the entire state apparatus was involved in a five-year campaign of terror there. His target, it seemed, was Sudan's president.

This week, the prosecutor privately informed Security Council members that on Monday he would ask the judges at the court in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, diplomats said. They said that the prosecution plans to bring charges of crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, a region of Sudan. The UN secreteray general, Ban Ki Moon, was also informed out of concern for the security of UN peacekeepers in the area, the diplomats said.

The prosecutor's office has called a news conference for Monday to disclose its plans.

The indictment of a sitting head of state in a war-torn country would not be unprecedented: Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia were both charged by international war crimes courts while in office.
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