The Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, has rejected accusations that the organisation deliberately targets African leaders, even though there are others elsewhere across the globe who have committed one crime or the other.
Former Liberia President Charles Taylor has been jailed by the ICC, with former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, currently standing trial.
[contextly_sidebar id=”CI0K4XPDu3UkKGtyGz1WpYwKMrGz1iI6″]There is also an arrest warrant for Sudan’s Omar Al-Bashir.
The ICC has been accused of not showing enough commitment towards prosecuting other leaders outside the continent.
But in an interview with Citi News’ Nana Boakye-Yiadom, Madam Bensouda insisted that those claims were meant to make them look bad in the eyes of the public.
“These people have an interest in portraying the ICC as an institution that does not have credibility, that is deliberately targeting them and by giving out this misinformation about the court, it turns public opinion against the court. This is something that they want to say to be able to label the institution as the one that lacks credibility and one that should not be taking the cases but on the contrary this is not really the reality on the ground,” she added.
She argued that such claims are not justified since it’s a matter that has to do with jurisdiction in relation to “where can the ICC act, where it cannot act, and what triggers the ICC to operate in certain situations and what doesn’t.”
“If you look at the current docket of the ICC, we do have cases outside Africa. For instance, I’ve just been authorized by the chamber to open investigations in Georgia and this is ongoing. But apart from that also, we have had preliminary investigations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Ukraine, Palestine, these are situations that are outside the African continent and some of them are nearing determination. It’s very easy to see that the reality is very much at variance with the perception that they want to create.
Fatou Bensouda was in Ghana for the GIMPA Law Conference on the theme: The ICC and Africa: A discussion on Legitimacy, Selectivity, Fairness and Accountability.”
The conference was attended by practicing lawyers, law students, academicians and several others from Ghana, Ivory Coast and other countries.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana