Given that for all its claims to be international, the self-styled International Criminal Court is in essence a European creation (Russia, China, India and the USA, amongst many other countries are not members). 

It would, therefore, be appropriate for the Sudanese President, government officials, other Sudanese, friends of Sudan and other Africans to refer to the ICC as The Hague as Europe’s Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, given that the ICC has chosen not to pursue any NATO country for any of the crimes they have committed with impunity and have only focused on Africa one could describe The Hague more accurately as the European Guantanamo Bay for Africans.
 

The ICC/Ocampo’s demand that third-party countries arrest and deliver President al-Bashir to The Hague can easily be described as the same as the Bush Administration’s “extraordinary rendition”. What is the difference between American “rendition” and European “rendition”, apart from the fact that one only applies to Africans?

The question must be asked how Europe can now justify procedures for its own institutions which it so rightly condemned when practiced by the United States.
 
And, of course, this is also leaving aside all the legal, political and moral question marks over the legitimacy and credibility of the “ICC”, and the assortment of legal and procedural irregularities that have become a hallmark of the ICC to date.
 
Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it of interest.

Sudan Research Centre
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