ICC:Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is daring world powers to ignore Darfur case, writes Chris Stephenin New York
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is not known as a risk-taker: critics have long accused him of excessive caution, a caution that has seen him complete five years in the job without jailing a single war criminal.
But he showed boldness in spades yesterday in charging Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir with genocide for crimes committed in Darfur.
Bashir is charged with three counts of genocide, each related to attacks on tribes that Moreno-Ocampo says Sudanese forces have been trying to wipe out. For good measure seven more charges for crimes against humanity and war crimes, were added.
The passionate language used is as dramatic as the actual charges. "For over five years, Bashir has denied the crimes," says Moreno-Ocampo. "He says rape does not exist in the Sudan. This is a fabrication." However, his decision to go after Bashir, with Sudan adamantly refusing to recognise the ICC, is a risk. Faced with world inaction over the continuing suffering in Darfur, Moreno-Ocampo has in effect doubled his stake, daring world powers to ignore him.
The UN Security Council mandated the ICC to investigate Darfur three years ago. In February 2007 Moreno-Ocampo charged two men with war crimes: humanitarian affairs minister Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed militia commander Ali Kushayb. Neither has been brought to justice. Worse for Moreno- Ocampo has been the lack of pressure from the council.
Former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia Richard Goldstone once said the international community was his "arms and legs" - only with its help could anyone be brought to justice. Goldstone's work bore fruit only when Nato commandos began snatching war crimes suspects from Bosnia, and Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was handed over only when the United States threatened to throttle his country with sanctions.
Moreno-Ocampo has no such "arms and legs". Military action to make arrests has been ruled out as impractical. And China, which buys Sudan's oil, has blocked attempts by the security council to impose sanctions. Worse, the UN has stalled on even sending promised peacekeepers into Sudan - they have still not arrived 12 months after they were ordered to deploy. Faced with the prospect of his case sliding into obscurity, Moreno-Ocampo has dared the international community to ignore it. He hopes to use the one weapon still available to him, world public opinion, to get a harder stance from the security council.
The court's judges have still to confirm the request for an arrest warrant, but this is likely to be a formality.
As commander-in-chief, Bashir has a case to answer on why such horrific crimes have continued for so long under his watch.
Since 2003 the UN estimates that 300,000 have been killed and 2½ million made homeless by co-ordinated army and militia attacks.
And Moreno-Ocampo, who made his name prosecuting Argentina's former junta leaders, has done a thorough job, accompanying the charges with meticulous chain-of-command diagrams, which, he says, show that Bashir "controls everything in Darfur".
Sudan has reacted to the indictment by insisting it does not recognise the court's authority.
"We don't recognise whatever comes out from the ICC - to us it is non-existent," said foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig.
In the coming weeks critics are likely to turn on the prosecutor, accusing him of making the deployment of peacekeepers even harder. Others will say the indictment will empower Darfur's rebels, currently at war with each other as well as Sudan's government, to carry on fighting.
Moreno-Ocampo insists he has no choice, and that without a judicial system that does not bend to political whims, there is no deterrent to genocide. His indictment of Bashir now puts the emphasis on the UN, which mandated him, to take action. "The ball is in their court," said the prosecutor.
• Chris Stephen is the author of Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic