South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling that the government broke the law when it defied an order to prevent Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir from leaving the country pending a decision on whether he should be arrested under an International Criminal Court warrant.
The government’s failure to take steps to arrest and detain al-Bashir so he could be surrendered to the ICC was inconsistent with its obligations and unlawful, the appeals court said Tuesday in a judgment delivered in the central city of Bloemfontein. State lawyers had argued that al-Bashir was guaranteed immunity from prosecution when he attended an African Union summit in Johannesburg in June.
