UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein criticized Jordan on Friday for failing to arrest Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir, who last week attended the Arab League summit in Amman.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued two arrest warrants for al-Bashir on the basis that there are reasonable grounds to believe that along with war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, extermination and rape, he has committed genocide against the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein pointed out that Jordan has broken its treaty obligation by hosting al-Bashir.
“In that context, I very much regret that Jordan, a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, received the President of Sudan, against whom an arrest warrant has been issued,” he said adding that “all states must abide by their treaty obligations.”
He further said the inaction of the Jordanian government in the presence of al-Bashir is a mistake before the ICC. “It is also weakening the global struggle against impunity, and for justice,” he said.
On Thursday, the South African litigation centre said that the South African government will appear before The Hague-based court on April 7 to explain why it failed to arrest the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he attended an African Union summit in South Africa in 2015.
Photo: UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein/UN