by GLEN FORD
For nine years Luis Moreno-Ocampo has dedicated the resources of the International Criminal Court to the exclusive task of prosecuting Africans. In the process, he has actively fomented imperial wars on the continent and encouraged the breakdown of fundamental principles of international law. He ends his term in office as he began it: as a lawyer for neocolonialism.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, leaves the ICC at the end of this month. The entire Black world ought to say “Good riddance.”
Moreno-Ocampo is from Argentina, and took office as the Court’s first prosecutor in 2003. He has committed the ICC’s resources almost exclusively to concocting indictments against Africans, while kissing Uncle Sam’s butt at every possible opportunity. Indeed, even as his term expires, Moreno-Ocampo continues to try to pin an ICC Marshal’s badge on the United States, even though the U.S. isn’t a signatory to the treaty that created the Court. In his last days in office, he remains determined to use the superpower to arrest Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. This, of course, would require that the U.S. commit acts of war against Sudan, in clear opposition to the will of the African Union. But, that appears to be Moreno-Ocampo’s purpose: to use the American superpower as a stick to threaten Africa.
The ICC prosecutor tried to enlist the U.S. as the Court’s enforcer back in June of 2010. Moreno-Ocampo had already indicted President al-Bashir for alleged crimes against humanity in Darfur, and was attempting to add a charge of genocide. However, the year before, the 53 member nations of the African Union had agreed that none would honor the ICC’s demand that the Sudanese leader be arrested if he set foot on their soil. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi presided over the African Union’s 2009 summit meeting. Apparently, this display of African dignity and independence enraged Moreno-Ocampo, who began asking countries with “special forces” and “rare and expensive capabilities that regional armies don’t have” to enforce ICC arrest warrants. Clearly, he was talking about United States, which has always refused membership in the International Criminal Court, preferring to remain a law unto itself.
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