http://news.yahoo.com/kenya-court-issues-arrest-warrant-sudans-bashir-005520034.html
Sudan expels Kenyan ambassador: foreign ministry
AFP – November 29, 2011
Sudan Monday ordered Kenya's ambassador to leave the country after a Kenyan
judge issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by
the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Darfur, the
foreign ministry said.
"The Sudanese government has ordered the Kenyan ambassador to leave the
country within 72 hours," foreign ministry spokesman Al-Obeid Meruh told
AFP.
"They have also ordered the Sudanese ambassador to leave Kenya and return
to Khartoum," he added.
Bashir is wanted in The Hague-based ICC for alleged war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide committed in Sudan's Darfur region, where the
UN says at least 300,000 people have been killed in the eight-year conflict.
Kenya has ratified the ICC's founding Rome statute, which theoretically
obliges it to execute the court's warrants, but it failed to arrest the
Sudanese leader when he visited the country in August 2010.
After issuing the arrest warrant on Monday, the Kenyan high court judge
said Bashir's arrest should be arranged by the Attorney General and the
Minister for Internal Security "should he ever set foot in Kenya."
Bashir flew to Nairobi last year to attend a ceremony marking the adoption
of Kenya's new constitution.
After leaving the country a free man, the Kenyan chapter of the
International Commission of Jurists, an association of legal professionals
that promotes human rights, approached the courts to issue a warrant.
"Bashir came in August and we filed (our suit) in October 2010. It was in
response to his arrival here," George Kegoro, ICJ Kenya's executive
director told AFP.
Just hours before announcing the expulsion of the Kenyan ambassador,
Sudan's foreign ministry spokesman had said the arrest warrant was linked
to internal political wranglings in Kenya and would not affect bilateral
relations.
The African Union has on several occasions called on its members states not
to arrest the Sudanese president, accusing the ICC of targeting only
Africans and arguing that Bashir's arrest would hurt the peace process
between Sudan and South Sudan.
Bashir took part in a regional summit in Malawi in mid-October after
attending an investiture ceremony for Djibouti President Ismaël Omar
Guelleh in May.
The Darfur conflict first erupted between non-Arab rebels and the
Arab-dominated Khartoum regime in 2003.
Around 1.9 million people remain displaced in addition to the hundreds of
thousands dead, according to UN estimates.
The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 10,000 and blames the
continuing lack of security on tribal conflict, minority armed forces and
banditry.
The ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accuses Bashir of having
personally instructed his forces to annihilate the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa
ethnic groups in Darfur.
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Received on Tue Nov 29 2011 - 10:41:26 EST