JOHANNESBURG // Sudan’s president was banned by a South Africa judge from leaving the country on Sunday after the International Criminal Court called for his arrest at a summit in Johannesburg.
Omar Al Bashir, who is attending the African Union summit, appeared for a group photo with other leaders in the region on Sunday, wearing a blue suit and smiling as cameras flashed.
“President Omar Al Bashir is prohibited from leaving the Republic of South Africa until a final order is made in this application,” South African judge Hans Fabricius said, according to local media reports.
The judge ordered the South African government to ensure that officials at all border posts enforce the court’s decision, according to Caroline James, a lawyer with the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, a rights group.
Mr Al Bashir – who is wanted for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Darfur conflict – mostly travels to countries that have not joined the ICC, but South Africa is a signatory of the court’s statutes.
The Southern African Litigation Centre, a legal rights group, launched an urgent court application to force the authorities to arrest Mr Al Bashir.
The Pretoria High Court is expected to rule on Monday if Mr Al Bashir should be handed over to the ICC to face those charges.
Sudan, however, has insisted Mr Al Bashir’s visit to Johannesburg was proceeding normally and that the president would return after the main meeting.
“It is difficult to give details of President Bashir’s timetable, but he will return when the main session is over. This could be today or tomorrow,” said Sudan’s state minister for foreign affairs, Kamal Ismail.
Mr Ismail told reporters in Khartoum that Mr Al Bashir had received assurances from the South African government prior to his visit that he would be welcome and was expected to return to Sudan on schedule.
He said the court order preventing Mr Al Bashir from leaving South Africa “has nothing to do with the reality on the ground”.
He added that “there is no threat to the life of the president of the Republic”.
The African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling party, said the government granted immunity “for all [summit] participants as part of the international norms for countries hosting such gathering of the AU or even the United Nations”.
“It is on this basis, amongst others, that the ANC calls upon [the] government to challenge the order now being brought to compel the South African government to detain president Al Bashir,” the ANC said, adding that African and Eastern European countries “continue to unjustifiably bear the brunt of the decisions of the ICC”.
Even before Sunday’s events, the African Union had asked the ICC to stop proceedings against sitting presidents and said it will not compel any member states to arrest a leader on behalf of the court.
Mr Al Bashir has travelled abroad before and local authorities had not detained him at the behest of the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said South Africa is under a legal obligation to arrest Mr Al Bashir and surrender him to the court. If Mr Al Bashir is not arrested, the matter will be reported to the court’s assembly of states and the United Nations Security Council, which first referred the case of Sudan’s Darfur region to the ICC in 2005, she said.
The charges against Mr Al Bashir, who took power in a 1989 coup, stem from reported atrocities in the conflict in Darfur. About 300,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in a government campaign, according to United Nations figures.
He has visited Malawi, Kenya, Chad and Congo in the last few years, all of which are ICC member states. The court does not have any powers to compel countries to arrest him and can only tell them they have a legal obligation to do it.
In March, the ICC halted proceedings against Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta after the prosecution said it did not have enough evidence against him.
Mr Kenyatta, who was also attending the Johannesburg summit, was charged in 2011 as an “indirect co-perpetrator” in post-election violence that left more than 1,000 people dead in 2007 and 2008. He has always maintained his innocence.
Kenyan deputy president William Ruto is on trial for crimes against humanity in the election-related violence.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
