From Ty McCormick of Foreign Policy:
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir stands accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. But on Sunday, he met with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy in Cairo, where he received a dignified welcome at the presidential palace. A number of human rights organizations including Amnesty International urged Morsy to cancel the meeting — which covered regional concerns as well as important bilateral issues like livestock trade and water rights in the Nile basin — or arrest the Sudanese leader upon his arrival. “If Egypt welcomes Omar Al-Bashir it will become a safe haven for alleged perpetrators of genocide,” Amnesty wrote in a press release.
Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March 2009 for crimes against humanity and then again in July 2010 for three counts of genocide, cannot travel in much of the world for fear of being extradited to the Hague. But Egypt is not a signatory to the Rome Statute — Jordan, Djibouti, and Comoros are the only members of the Arab League to ratify the ICC’s founding charter — and U.N. Security Council 1593, which referred the Sudanese crisis to the ICC’s special prosecutor, merely “urges” non-signatories to “cooperate fully” with the criminal investigation.
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Posted by Theodore Shoebat
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