Yesterday, a group of international legal scholars and human rights activists sent a letter to the UN Security Council, urging Sudan to hand over two indicted war criminals, whom it has thus far shielded from prosecution. It seems that the ICC is on the same page. The Sudan Tribune reports:
The prosecutor of the ICC Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in prepared remarks at the twelfth diplomatic briefing that his office is working with unspecified countries to trace the whereabouts of Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs.
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Ocampo said that he is pushing world countries to assist in the arrest of the Darfur war crime suspects including those who are not members of the court.
“Our principal objective is to make sure that the issue of enforcement of the arrest warrants is not put off the agenda of relevant international meetings” he said.
This will hopefully accelerate the slow process — the two men were indicted over a year ago — of bringing the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide to justice. Unfortunately, the reach of the ICC’s current ambitions remains constricted. The arrest warrants should carry the weight of international obligation, but — due to Khartoum’s persistent obstructionism and a paucity of international will — Moreno-Ocampo seems backed into a defensive position. Instead of staking out a more affirmative role for his office, he must work to fight for the issue to remain on the agenda at all.
Moreno-Ocampo’s efforts should be praised, but he certainly could use some help — starting with the Member States that he has explicitly called on to aid the monitoring and prosecution processes.