AMSTERDAM: The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Monday it would refer Jordan to the UN Security Council for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir when he visited Amman in March. The court issued arrest warrants for Bashir in 2009 and 2010 over his alleged role in war crimes including genocide in Sudan’s Darfur province. Jordan, as a member of the ICC, is obliged to carry out its arrest warrants. Sudan is not a member of the Hague-based permanent international war crimes court, and the ICC therefore does not have automatic jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes there. However, the UN Security Council referred the case to the international court in March 2005. The Security Council has the power to impose sanctions for a failure to cooperate with the ICC, but has so far not acted on court referrals. A diplomatic row broke out when Bashir visited South Africa in 2015 and Pretoria failed to arrest him. South Africa’s government argued that doing so would have been a violation of the immunity Bashir enjoys as a head of state. That argument was rejected by South African courts as well as the ICC. Published in Daily Times, December 12th 2017.