If confirmation was needed, the recent decision of the Sudanese President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, not to travel to Copenhagen for the UN climate change summit “in retaliation” for Danish cartoons depictions of the prophet Muhammad underscores the widely-held view that the Sudanese Islamist regime is packed with thugs, crooks and terminally dim buffoons.
The Sudanese head of state faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last March accusing him of orchestrating war crimes in Darfur. Despite making several trips in the region, Bashir has so far avoided all states that have ratified the ICC statute.
However the threat of arrest is not what deters the President. At least not according to the loud-mouthed Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Haleem. The ambassador is a man known for living in a hallucinogenic atmosphere of hyperbole on a planet far, far removed from reality. Speaking to BBC World’s Hardtalk, Abdel-Haleem became characteristically over-excited:
there is nothing preventing president Bashir to move anywhere.
Apart from possibly an ICC arrest warrant? Cannily asked our man at Auntie.
Warming to his deranged excuses for his President hiding under the bed in the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Abdel-Haleem became incandescent with simulated rage:
But really for us going to Copenhagen at the highest levels also has its own political calculations because after the defamation and the characterization of prophet Mohamed any Muslim leader will find it difficult to go to Copenhagen.
The Ambassador gets very cross
Asked whether Sudan fears that Bashir could be arrested on Danish soil, the ambassador said that the conference is a UN one and not a bilateral one which means that:
He is free to go anywhere… Whatever you mention piracy is there in international relations which is very regrettable fact. We have our position made very clear on this so-called ICC
Back on Planet Earth, the Sudanese President is limited in his travels abroad out of fear that being in international airspace makes him at risk of being apprehended and extradited to The Hague.
Bashir has already avoided several invitations in the last few months to attend conferences in Uganda, Nigeria, Venezuela and the US. Presumably these countries too have grievously offended the delicate religious sentiments of the Sudanese President – because, of course, there can be no other reason for this peace-loving, progressive President’s reticence to travel to these other far away places, now can there?