Al-bashir

Al-bashir. These six decisions, issued from 2009 until 2017, were penned by ICC judges from nine different countries including Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ghana, Italy, Latvia and the Republic of Korea. Other courts had decided similar questions along the same lines the , the , the , and the in national cases involving al-Bashir. In fact, every court and every judge asked to rule on the question of head of state immunity before the ICC or another international court found they had no immunity under international law if properly indicted on charges of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.

Second, the decision is correct as a matter of international law. As I wrote in my earlier essay, in my view, the travaux préparatoires of the Rome Statute, as well as other sources, indicate that Article 27 1 of the Rome Statute codifies the customary international law rule that whatever immunities an official might have before national courts cannot be pled as a bar or a defense to criminal responsibility, ratione materiae, before the ICC regarding the jus cogens crimes in the Rome Statute. Article 27 2 complements this provision by ensuring that no procedural immunities bar the ICC from exercising this jurisdiction.