resident Omar Hassan al Bashir, the Sudanese strongman has defied the international community, and more particularly the International Criminal Court (ICC). With an arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC on the 4th of March 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, he has, with the backing of the African Union (AU) and the Arab League, exposed one of the major weaknesses of the international court sitting at the Hague; that of execution of its warrant of arrest. The ICC wants Bashir to answer for his alleged involvement in the atrocities emanating from the Darfur conflict where it is estimated that about 300 000 Darfurian civilians have been killed, and over 2 million people either internally displaced or turned refugees.
Bashir's dismissal of the court as an imperialist tool manipulated by the west to hunt down African leaders seems to resonate well with the AU. In his public defiance of the warrant, Bashir visited Eritrea, Ethiopia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Zimbabwe; countries that incidentally are not state parties to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. The feeling amongst analysts is that Bashir is careful in choosing his destinations. Since such countries are not state parties to the ICC treaty, they are, therefore, under no international law obligation to arrest and handover Bashir to the court. While the AU stance does not seem to sit well with all the states in Africa, only Botswana was very outspoken in condemning it. In fact, the state president, Ian Khama was bold to say that Botswana will arrest Bashir if he shows up within Botswana's territory. That, therefore, constitutes a clear message to al Bashir not to venture into the semi desert country. Some other countries like South Africa and Uganda have been ambivalent in their stance about Bashir's fate if he was to visit their countries. While basher had cause to visit the two countries in the recent past, he diplomatically avoided the visits.
With the recent news that the AU has invited the Sudanese strongman to Nigeria for a peace talk on the Darfur crisis, one, therefore, wonders what fate holds for him with regards to the ICC warrant hanging over his head. Nigeria as a state party to the ICC is bound by international law to arrest and hand him over to the court. Furthermore, Nigeria's membership of the UN Security Council imposes upon it a moral duty to act in furtherance of the ICC cause. This is not to suggest that the ICC is a creature of the UN Security Council, nor to suggest that the strings of the court are pulled from there. However, if Nigeria is to be seen as a global respecter of norms, and more so as the Yar'Adua government is anchored on the respect for the rule of law, one then expects that were Bashir bold enough to take the risk and travel to Abuja, he will be keeping his date with the Luis Moreno-Ocampo court.
With Abuja's record of collaborating with international criminal mechanisms as exemplified in its arrest and surrender of Charles Taylor, the erstwhile Liberia strongman, to the Special Court of Sierra Leone, Bashir might be having second thoughts on honouring the invitation to attend the talk. If he does not honour the invitation, he would be signalling to Khartoum observers that he is not as tough as he would want people to think, as it would be interpreted that he chickened out for fear of getting arrested in Nigeria. If however he attends and Abuja does not arrest him, Abuja would have indicated that it cannot be trusted when it comes to issues of global security. It would dent Nigeria's image as a non permanent member of the Security Council, and also erode its chances of being elevated to the revered permanent membership status of the Security Council if ever the UN Security Council reforms takes place. Conversely, if Abuja were to arrest Bashir and hand him over, it will secure its place as an enforcer of global norms, while casting itself, at least, within the African network as not worthy of trust. Nigeria is, therefore, in a Catch 22 situation.
* Ben Okolo has research interests in the area of security studies, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and conflict resolution.
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