(SS)

No doubt that it was strange the recent decision of the Appeal Chamber of the International Criminal Court to grant Prosecutor General Ocampo his request to appeal the decision of the ICC judges of dropping genocide charges in the arrest warrant issued for the Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir last March. 

Apart from our conviction that the case is political, this decision, from the legal point of view, has nothing to do with the recognized judicial systems.

The Appeal Chamber has directed the Pre-Trial Chamber 1 to decide a new on whether it will charge President Al-Bashir with genocide or not. It is well known that the Appeal courts are supervisory courts that do not ask the courts, which have made a decision on specific case, to reverse their decisions, that is to say, no courts but the appeal courts have the right to reconsider such decisions. Thus, the appeal court had to either support the decision of the Appeal Chamber with respect to the genocide charges or reject it.  

The  Appellate Chamber has spoken about ambiguous criteria although it is well known that directing of genocide charges requires provision of specific elements the Pre-Trial Department did not find when issued is decision last March.

This fact raises questions like what happened to make the appeal department accept the request to appeal the ICC decision of dropping genocide in the arrest warrant for President Al-Bashir.

I is obvious that the Appeal Chamber has decided, following its failure to introduce new and reasonable reasons to add genocide to the charges against President Al-Bashir, to prolong the case in order to obstruct the candidacy of President Al-bashir in the coming presidential election in Sudan.