SA’s withdrawal hits International Criminal Court

Pretoria. South Africa announced Friday that it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court, dealing a major blow to a troubled institution set up to try the world’s worst crimes.

The decision followed a dispute last year when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited the country for an African Union summit despite facing an ICC arrest warrant over alleged war crimes.

South Africa refused to arrest him, saying he had immunity as a head of state.

Justice Minister Michael Masutha told reporters in Pretoria that the ICC was “inhibiting South Africa’s ability to honour its obligations relating to the granting of diplomatic immunity”.

“There is a view in Africa that the ICC in choosing who to prosecute has seemingly preferred to target leaders in Africa,” Masutha added to AFP.

The ICC, set up in 2002, is often accused of bias against Africa and has also struggled with a lack of cooperation, including from the United States which has signed the court’s treaty but never ratified it. The withdrawal “shows startling disregard for justice from a country long seen as a global leader,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Amnesty International said South Africa was “betraying millions of victims of the gravest human rights violations and undermining the international justice system”.

The US said it was “concerned” by Pretoria’s decision.

“We do think that the ICC has made valuable contributions in the service of accountability in a number of situations and we hope that other governments would share that,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. As an ICC signatory, South Africa’s failure to arrest Bashir last year led to a wave of condemnation and an early threat from the government to withdraw from The Hague-based court. Bashir has evaded arrest since his ICC indictment in 2009 for alleged war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur conflict in which 300,000 people were killed and two million forced to flee their homes. Earlier this month Burundi said it would leave the court, and Namibia and Kenya have also raised the possibility. Welcoming South Africa’s decision to withdraw from the ICC, Sudan urged other African member nations to follow suit.(AFP)