Saudi Journalists & So.Sudan Support ICC Arrest Warrant of Bashir

A delegation of senior Middle Eastern leaders has traveled to Sudan to express international support for Omar al-Bashir.

Officials from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah joined Syria's parliament speaker and the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group for talks with al-Bashir in Khartoum

President Omar al Bashir seems to be the only one who failed to understand from the outset how serious an issue Darfur was as the news agencies hastened to transmit reports about it. It seems that he was the only one who failed to believe that there is a court and continued to deny and mock until a resolution was declared for his arrest. 

The League of Arab States will not help him as it merely carries out its duties as a mediator. Arab countries are preoccupied with their own concerns and will not lose their negotiating power for the sake of Al-Bashir. The minority of countries that are claiming to lend him support are using him politically at his expense. Finally, he will have to face the accusations with courage or cowardice rather than challenge them.

The Sudanese regime should first admit that it has committed many mistakes and realize that it does not understand the concept of international order otherwise it would not have found itself in this dilemma.

When Ali Larijani says that the targeting of the Sudanese President is an insult to Muslims, it raises the following questions: aren’t the people, or let us say victims, of Darfur also Muslims? Isn’t it insulting to “Islamic” Iran to approve of this kind of tyranny against the people of Darfur?

And when Hamas defends al Bashir, reminding the Arab leaders of Saddam Hussein’s fate, it raises the following questions: what about Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi victims? What about what he did to Iraq during all those years as ruler until he was found in that infamous pit? What about his Arab victims?

Ms. Badriya Al-Bashar, a Saudi female novelist said in the daily Al-Hayat newspaper that Arabs accept international rulings from The Hague “only if it is in their favor”.

“But if the decision came opposing to what we wished for, we say ‘immerse it in water and drink it’” she added.

Mr. Daoud Al-Shriyan wrote in the same newspaper that Bashir’s decision to expel 13 aid groups as “making it difficult for someone to justify it or sympathize with him”.

He also criticized Bashir’s reception of delegations from Iran, Syria, and Hamas “as if he is adopting their problems with the international community”.

“Solidarity with these groups is no less wrong than preventing the aid groups from working in Darfur” Al-Shriyan said.

The major Darfur rebel faction that signed an agreement with the Sudanese government issued a statement today “strongly supporting” the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusation against president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.

Dr. Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement group in Darfur, has declared that his movement is politically and militarily willing to confront the threats of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir whose arrest is expected to be demanded by the International Criminal Court [ICC].