ICC Refers Jordan’s Non-Cooperation in Al-Bashir Case to Assembly of States Parties and the UN Security Council (December 11, 2017) [1]
On December 11, 2017, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) referred [3] Jordan to the Assembly of States Parties of the Rome Statute (ASP) and the UN Security Council for not executing the Court’s request for the arrest of Omar Al-Bashir when he was in Jordan for the League of Arab States' Summit on March 29, 2017. The Chamber noted that it had already given its opinion in an analogous case [4] when South Africa failed to arrest Al-Bashir while he was in the state. The Chamber had not referred South Africa because it was the first to approach the ICC with a request for an opinion on a referral of noncompliance, which is not the case for Jordan. The press release [5] also notes that Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut “appended a minority opinion concurring with the Majority's conclusions while considering that the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) to which Jordan and Sudan are parties offers the basis for the non-immunity of Sudan's Head of State in the present case.”