The Attorney General of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan is in Sudan. On the menu of discussions, the fate of Omar el-Bechir, whom Khartoum promised to extradite a year ago.
It's been a year since Sudan has promised to extradite its ex-president, Omar al-Bashir, wanted since 2009 by the International Criminal Court. El-Bashir had, for many years, mocked the ICC by traveling to countries that had not signed the Rome Statute, the ICC's founding treaty.
On August 11, 2021, two years after the fall of al-Bashir, the Sudanese government assured that it would "hand over the wanted persons to the ICC". On the list, in addition to President Omar el-Bechir, there was talk of extraditing two former ministers, Ahmed Haroun and Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein.
A year later, where are we? While he had been detained in Kober prison, one of the oldest in Sudan, since April 2019, Omar el-Bashir had been authorized, in April 2022, to be transferred to al-Alya military hospital. Officially in the grip of arterial hypertension, al-Bechir had, according to several sources, been saved by a falsified medical report.
Still in Sudan, therefore, Omar el-Bechir does not seem ready to leave his country to join the Netherlands. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons that prompted the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to go to Sudan.
A file that is no longer progressing
With his delegation, Khan will notably visit the Darfur region, after meetings with the country's leaders. A visit of several days, which will last until August 25th. Over the past year, the situation on the ground has changed. Indeed, after the Abdel Fattah al-Burhane's coup, the ICC is still waiting to hear whether al-Bashir's August 2021 extradition agreement still stands. Because al-Burhane was a strong man of Omar el-Bechir's regime and his assumption of full powers is not a positive sign sent to the ICC.
For Khan, it is therefore a question of discussing the fate of the former dictator, accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Last April, the ICC opened the Ali Kusheib trial, also accused of war crimes in Darfur.
Obtaining guarantees from the Sudanese military junta in the al-Bashir case represents the first big test for Karim Khan. However, this file is slipping. If the British lawyer does not want to lose face, he still has three days to convince al-Burhane to keep the commitment sealed between Sudan and the ICC in August 2021.