News Article by REUTERS posted on September 27, 2008 at 23:52:24: EST (-5 GMT)
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Benin leader warns ICC against "harassing" Africans DAKAR (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court seems bent on harassing African statesmen in its drive to prosecute Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, Benin's president said on Friday. The comments to Radio France International by Thomas Boni Yayi, who heads one of Africa's smallest states but is respected in the West, reflected unhappiness among African leaders about the ICC chief prosecutor's efforts to indict Bashir. The African Union, the Arab League and other alliances have urged the U.N. Security Council to block moves to indict the Sudanese leader to avoid shattering delicate attempts to achieve peace in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region. But while recalling the AU position, Yayi, who hosted a visit to Benin by U.S. President George W. Bush in February, went a step further, suggesting the International Criminal Court (ICC) seemed to be singling out Africans in its work. "Curiously, this international body -- is it just a coincidence? -- ... doesn't stop harassing African statesmen, only Africans," Yayi told RFI on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. "We have the feeling that this court is chasing Africa," Yayi said, adding that if that was the case, Africa opposed such a campaign. He had been asked for his view on the Bashir case. The ICC in May arrested former Congolese vice-president and ex-rebel warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba on a warrant for war crimes committed in the Central African Republic. It is also pursuing prosecutions against other war crimes suspects in Democratic Republic of Congo and in Uganda. The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accuses Bashir of orchestrating a genocide in Darfur that has killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through "slow death" and forced 2.5 million from their homes. ICC judges have summoned the chief prosecutor for a first hearing next week on his request to charge Bashir. Sudanese officials have said the president will travel next week to Ghana, which has ratified the treaty creating the ICC, for an African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) summit on October 1-3. Bashir has not travelled to a country that has ratified the ICC treaty since the prosecutor asked the court's judges in July to issue an arrest warrant against him. A senior Ghanaian government source said this week that even if the ICC issued a warrant for Bashir's arrest while he was in Accra, Ghana was unlikely to detain him. The Ghanaian source cited the AU's call for the case to be handled differently and said complex issues were involved. In Darfur, African peacekeepers are due to transfer to a joint U.N.-AU force to help stop fighting that international experts estimate has killed 200,000 people since 2003. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
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