Al-Bashir shouldn’t feel Aggrieved at being taken to The Hague Hilton

By Mahmoud A. Suleiman

The three genocide counts the International Criminal Court (ICC) added to the 2009 list of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, on Monday the 12^th July 2010 against Sudan's President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, without a thread of doubt, will bring him to trial at The Hague in the Netherlands sooner or later, political analysts say. Furthermore, observers add that al-Bashir shouldn’t feel so bad given the fact that he will be joining a handful of his opposite number Génocidaires, enjoy their company and get the facilities and benefits offered to detainees in the famous Dutch prison at The Hague, which according to some critics referred to as, mockingly, The Hague Hilton!   Al-Bashir will not suffer loneliness at the detention centre since his neighbours include former Congolese warlords like the former Congolese vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba who has been accused of eight counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture and murder, during a five-month conflict that began in October 2002, Serbian militia leaders such as Radovan Karadzic, and a former Liberian president Charles Taylor accused of instigating murder, rape and enslavement are confined in two detention centres with private cells stocked like college dormitories, with wooden bookcases, television sets and personal computers. Among the other amenities are a gym, a trainer, a spiritual room and a common kitchen where some former enemies trade recipes and dine on cevapi, or Balkan meatballs, quoting The New York Times article: ‘Accused of War Crimes, living with Perks’ by Doreen Carvajal describing a standard cell in the International Criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, the Netherlands. Additional benefits and entitlements for Marshall Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Basher and mates include travel subsidies of tens of thousands of euros for family visits from distant African countries, a privilege never dreamt of by any prisoner or a detainee!

The arrest warrant for the president of the isolated regime Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir stated that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that since April 2003 Sudanese forces attempted genocide against the Darfur tribal groups Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa. The UN estimates 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have been forced from their homes since ethnic African rebels rose up in 2003. The hard-line National Congress Party (NCP) regime led by al-Bashir threw out 13 international aid agencies working in Darfur in 2009 when the International Criminal Court (ICC) first indicted him, further compounding the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

According to Agence France Presse (AFP) the Government of Sudan (GoS) handed Laura Palatini and Carla Martinez of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) a letter on Wednesday 14^th July 2010 ordering them to leave the country within 72 hours, amid speculations that it is connected to the genocide charges leveled that week by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against president Omer Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir.

Sudan's ambassador to the UN, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad who is no stranger to controversy and the use of non diplomatic vulgar language was reported to have lashed out the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo accusing him of becoming an impediment of peace in Sudan. Abdalmahmood, naively, insists that Sudan is not bound by the ICC since it is not a member of the court! He is oblivious of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1593, referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC. 31 Mar 2005. Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, the Security Council vote counted 11 countries in favour of the referral, none against and 4 countries—Algeria, Brazil, China and the United States—abstaining. This United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote marks the first time the Security Council has referred a case to the ICC whose treaty, the Rome Statute, came into force on 1 July 2002. On 6 June 2005, the Prosecutor of the ICC, Mr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo officially opened an investigation into crimes committed in Darfur. Under Council Resolution 1593 (2005), the ICC Prosecutor is invited to address the Council every six months on the progress of his investigation in Darfur.

The NCP regime is in denial while trying to escape from the painful unbearable reality that Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter sets out the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace. It allows the Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take military and nonmilitary action to "restore international peace and security".

Impunity, under the attacks and brutal killings and other heinous crimes perpetrated against thousands unarmed Sudanese civilians in Darfur will not be permitted in the twenty-first century where the world has become  as though one small village or a hamlet, thanks to the  media and information technology, especially the World Wide Web Internet in addition to the growing awareness among the people and the revival of widespread human conscience which seeks to recover the usurped rights of the oppressed peoples under some authoritarian regimes such as the current fundamentalist despotic one ruling in Khartoum. Furthermore, do not forget Marshall Omer al-Bashir that justice is available in the International Criminal Court at The Hague; the judges of the Court may find you presumed innocent and get acquitted  and would return to Sudan. This is because the type of injustice prevailing in the courts of Sudan, which is run by elements in the security services, is unmatched in the Netherlands and definitely not in any democratic state in the world.  

The legal doctrine that says the accused is presumed innocent until convicted will take on President Omar al-Bashir in the event of surrender voluntarily, as some of the accused did, to the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands today before tomorrow. Do NOT listen to the ill-advice of your dishonest army of Advisors who surround you like a bracelet around the wrist. Think of the Fate of the Great Sudan and its great people. Will Marshal Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, the incumbent president of Sudan, comply, with courage, to this Action which May be considered Honourable? Sorry, that is the SIXTY FOUR DOLLAR QUESTION, which remains to be answered!

Dr. Mahmoud A. Suleiman is the Deputy Chairman of the General Congress for the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). He can be reached at [email protected]