South African Court issues fresh order blocking Sudanese president Bashir from leaving

The North Gauteng High Court has postponed the hearing on an urgent application to compel South Africa to arrest Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity until Monday morning.

In the meantime‚ Judge Hans Fabricius reaffirmed that the Sudanese president may not leave South Africa until a final order is made in the application.

The Judge also ordered that the Director of Home affairs be required to serve the order all officials responsible for ports and provide the name of that individuals. 

President Omar Al-Bashir is in South Africa to attend the African Union heads of state summit. The SA Litigation Centre brought an application for an order compelling South Africa to issue a warrant for his arrest on Sunday following a call for his arrest at the summit by the International Criminal Court.

In the court papers the Executive director of the SALC,Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh said that the Centre had briefed its lawyer from 2009 to prepare papers when they became aware that Bashir was invited to inauguration of President Jacob Zuma.

The SALC says it should have not been necessary for them to compel government to perform its constitutional duty of arresting Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir.

Ramjathan-Keogh said that they were alerted to Al-Bashir presence in country from number of media reports. Bashir was also listed as a speaker on the AU Summit Programme.

Al-Bashir is accused committing genocide and war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Dafur, Sudan. On 4 March in 2009 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Bashir.

In the court papers SALC that Bashir is criminall responsible for attacks against a section of the civilian populations of Darfur, including murder, rape, torture, extermination and forcibly moving large numbers of civilians.

Crimes were allegedly committed in during five year counter-insurgency campaign by Sudan’s government which was started in 2003. The campaign was aimed against the Sudanese Liberation Movement, The Justice and Equality Movement and other armed groups.

The conflict which resulted in the death of more than 300‚000 people and displacement of 2.5-million people‚ according to United Nations.

The SALC argued in its papers that under the Rome Statute those crimes are prohibited. The South African government signed the Rome Statute in July 2000 and ratified it in November that year. Because the law was ratified South Africa is obliged to abided by the laws of  statute.

The SALC says that Minster of Safety and Security and National Commissioner of the South Africa Police Service among others are required to “arrest and/or detention of person whom, under South African and international law, are suspected of crimes.”   

The ICC claims that irrespective of the fact the Bashir is a sitting president, that does not exclude his criminal responsibility nor does it grant him immunity.

He said the hearing into the matter would resume at 11.30am on Monday June 15.