Friday, February 23, 2007

More ICC News: Indictments in Darfur situation to be announced on Tuesday

As already noted by Julian Ku over at Opinio Juris, the ICC Prosecutor has announced that he "will submit evidence, in connection with named individuals, of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur," and that this evidence will be "file[d] with the ICC judges".
I guess that means that the first applications for warrants of arrest will be submitted on Tuesday.

The big question, of course, is whom the OTP will choose to focus on, especially whether it will also seek warrants against Sudanese government officials and thus risk the non-cooperation of that government. I find this hard to predict - so far, the OTP has in all instances only prosecuted one party to the conflict (i.e. the UPC in the DR Congo and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda), but then again, those were state, not Security Council, referrals...

We'll see. In the meantime, the discussion, typcial of international criminal law issues, of "rule of law" vs. "Realpolitik" (or "justice" vs. "peace", or however one wants to frame this discussion) seems to be already beginning at Opinio Juris.
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