ICC Prosecutor Closes Investigation into Gabon (September 21, 2018) [1]
On September 21, 2018, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda decided [3] to close the preliminary examination into the situation in Gabon. In September 2016, the government of Gabon sent the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) a referral regarding alleged crimes that had been taking place in Gabon surrounding the presidential election since May 2016. In the referral, the Gabonese government “alleged that opposition leader and former presidential candidate, Mr. Jean Ping, incited his supporters to commit genocide during his 2016 presidential campaign” and that opposition supporters committed crimes in the aftermath of the presidential election’s results announcement amounting to crimes against humanity. As noted in the press release [4], the Prosecutor decided to close the examination due to a lack of subject matter jurisdiction, concluding that there was no reasonable basis to believe that the 2016 post-election violence constituted crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute and the available information did not support the allegation of incitement to genocide during the election campaign.