{"id":269464,"date":"2010-02-03T04:26:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T09:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opiniojuris.org\/?p=11148"},"modified":"2010-02-03T04:26:02","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T09:26:02","slug":"breaking-pre-trial-chamber-must-reconsider-genocide-charges-against-bashir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/269464","title":{"rendered":"Breaking: Pre-Trial Chamber Must Reconsider Genocide Charges Against Bashir"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Kevin Jon Heller <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As I predicted<\/a>, the Appeals Chamber has rejected the Pre-Trial Chamber’s interpretation<\/a> of the “reasonable grounds” standard:<\/p>\n

\n

Appeals judges said the court was wrong to conclude in March that there was insufficient evidence to merit charging al-Bashir with three genocide counts. Instead, it had charged him with seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and forced expulsions in Darfur province.<\/p>\n

The standard of proof the court sought for genocide charges “was higher and more demanding than what is required” in its statutes, appellate judge Erkki Kourula of Finland said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The decision likely paves the way for al-Bashir to be indicted with humanity’s worst crime – attempting to wipe out entire ethnic groups in the war-ravaged province.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I will have much more to say about the decision soon.\u00a0 The decision is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

POSTSCRIPT: I’m glad the Appeals Chamber reached the correct conclusion, but it’s absurd that it took them nearly eight months to issue an 18-page decision (13 of which are simply background).\u00a0 This was — at least from a legal perspective — an easy issue.\u00a0 The AC should not have kept the OTP, Bashir, and the rest of the world hanging so long.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Kevin Jon Heller As I predicted, the Appeals Chamber has rejected the Pre-Trial Chamber’s interpretation of the “reasonable grounds” standard: Appeals judges said the court was wrong to conclude in March that there was insufficient evidence to merit charging al-Bashir with three genocide counts. Instead, it had charged him with seven counts of war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}