From Holocaust to Darfur, war criminals elude justice

The most notorious living perpetrator of genocide can sleep a little easier. 

The International Criminal Court (ICC), which five years ago indicted Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for organizing the genocide in Darfur, recently suspended further action on Darfur because of the failure of the United States and other countries to help bring Bashir to justice. 

Ironically, the ICC’s announcement came just before the 70th anniversary of a long-forgotten double-cross by the Roosevelt administration of its own ambassador to the Allied commission on Nazi war crimes.

Bashir was indicted in 2009 for sponsoring the Arab militias that have slaughtered an estimated 400,000 members of non-Arab tribes in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. He became the first sitting president to be charged with war crimes.

But when it came to actually arresting Bashir, neither the U.S. nor any other country has stepped up. It’s not that the U.S. is incapable of capturing fugitive terrorists and tyrants: recall how American commandos intercepted the murderers of American tourist Leon Klinghoffer, and how they brought Panama’s Manuel Noriega to justice. 

The problem, rather, is that the Obama administration has not wanted to offend Bashir’s allies: Russia and China, which are Sudan’s main suppliers of military and economic assistance; the Arab League, which embraces Bashir as kin; and the African Union, which sees him as a victim of Western colonialism.

As a result, the Obama administration has almost never even criticized governments that have hosted visits by Bashir—even when they were countries that are major recipients of U.S. aid, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Iraq. The administration also blocked a congressional effort to penalize countries that invite Bashir.

It’s not the first time political considerations have interfered with prosecuting perpetrators of genocide.

I