In compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1593, through which the situation in Darfur was referred to the Court, the ICC prosecutor is required to report to the Council every six months regarding progress in the investigation.
This is the prosecutor’s eighth report to the Council and updates progress in the Darfur investigation since his last UNSC report on 3 June 2008.
“The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court this afternoon said that, while the Sudanese Government had not cooperated at all with his indictment of Sudanese President Omer al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, he was confident that the Sudanese President would be held to account.
‘I never lose my cases,’ Luis Moreno-Ocampo said during a Headquarters news conference. ‘Realistically I think he will face justice. I don’t know if that will be in two months or two years. But if the judges decide to indict him, the destiny of Mr. al-Bashir is to face justice.’
Speaking to the press after briefing the Security Council on the Court’s investigations during the past six months into war crimes in Darfur, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said Mr. al-Bashir’s legal fate was in the hands of the Court’s judges….
Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said that, while Sudanese national courts could decide to grant Mr. al-Bashir immunity, they must act based on the evidence presented by the Court’s investigation. The Sudanese Government could not cut a deal by turning in Ahmad Harun, formerly Minister of State of the Interior and now Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, who was wanted by the Court for allegedly coordinating murders, rapes, torture, forced displacement and unlawful imprisonment on innocent civilians in Darfur….
Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said the evidence pointed to Mr. al-Bashir’s role in not only ordering crimes, but also replacing commanders, recruiting the Janjaweed after promising to demobilize them and other methods to carry out crimes, while using diplomacy and cover ups to protect himself….
A correspondent asked about possible tensions with the Russian Federation’s Government when the Court launched investigations into alleged crimes committed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said he did not anticipate difficulty, adding that the Russian General Prosecutors had been very cooperative during the Court’s handling of complaints from Georgian citizens denouncing alleged crimes committed by Russian troops in Georgia.
Regarding criticism that the Court focused too heavily on war crimes in Africa, while ignoring atrocities in such places as Iraq and Lebanon, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said the Court could not take up cases in those two countries because their respective Governments were not state Parties to the Court’s founding 1998 Rome Statute. Nor had the Security Council, which could refer cases to the Court, asked the Court to begin investigations there. There were 108 State Parties to the Court, among them many African countries.
