The Saudi invitation to Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al Bashir to attend the Islamic-American Summit scheduled to be held by U.S President Donald Trump in the attendance of over 50 leaders from all over Islamic countries raised a state of controversy over the position of the American president with the Sudanese president wanted to appear before International Criminal Court in accusation of committing war crimes.
Sudan’s president, indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes including genocide, has been invited to a summit in Saudi Arabia alongside President Trump, a Sudanese government spokesman said Tuesday. If President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan attends the meeting this weekend with Mr. Trump, human rights advocates said, it would be a destructive breach of longstanding American policy.
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court but has long sought to ostracize defendants who defy the court’s arrest warrants, including Mr. Bashir, who has led Sudan for nearly three decades. He was indicted in 2009 and 2010 on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region. In refusing to honor the indictments, he has come to symbolize impunity toward the Hague-based court.
The Associated Press quoted unidentified Sudanese sources as saying earlier on Tuesday that Mr. Bashir had been invited to the Saudi summit. His invitation was first reported last week in the Sudanese news media.
The official Saudi Press Agency reported on May 1 that a senior Saudi representative had visited Sudan and met with Mr. Bashir, but the Saudis have not announced that he will attend the summit. Mekki Elmograbi, a spokesman at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, confirmed that Mr. Bashir had been invited but also did not say whether he would attend.
There was no immediate comment from the White House on whether Mr. Trump knew Mr. Bashir had been invited or whether the two might meet. Rights advocates expressed alarm at the possibility.
“Any interaction by President Trump with al-Bashir in Saudi Arabia, should al-Bashir attend the meeting, would send a terrible signal to the victims of the crimes and raise major questions about U.S. commitment to justice for them,” said Elise Keppler, associate director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. “Al-Bashir belongs in The Hague facing the charges against him, not hobnobbing with officials in Saudi Arabia.”
Sudan has been a stalwart ally of Saudi Arabia, even sending troops to join the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.
Mr. Bashir has visited numerous countries since his indictments and could be arrested if he visits members of the International Criminal Court.
Most recently, he was at an Arab League meeting in Jordan, which is a member of the court, but the Jordanians took no steps to detain him. Saudi Arabia is not a member and has no such obligation.
Still, Mr. Bashir has had a few close calls. At a 2015 African Union meeting in South Africa, a court member, he was unable to leave while South African judges pondered whether he should be arrested. He left after President Jacob Zuma of South Africa intervened.