CAIRO: An online petition addressing the International Criminal Court (ICC) is calling for the issuance of an arrest warrant against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib El-Adly for what it termed “heinous crimes against humanity.
The “Arrest Mubarak petition had at time of press garnered 216 signatures. It is also calling for the seizure of their assets and bank accounts.
The petition lists a number of “crimes as a basis for the request. These include “arbitrary arrest and detention for indefinite time of innocent people without charge or trial . systematic torture and sexual abuse of detainees, discrimination against Copts and the abduction and disappearance of innocent people.
Human rights watchdogs consistently report on cases of torture and other human rights abuses in Egypt, but even if more signatures are added to the petition, it is unlikely that such a case can be heard at the ICC.
“There are violations of human rights and international law in Egypt, but these cases do not fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC, so the case against them is weak . because there isn’t a case that can be considered as targeting a specific group, said Sherif Azer from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.
While Egypt is signatory to the Rome Statute that governs the mechanisms of the ICC since 2000, it is yet to ratify it. Only Jordan, Djibouti and the Comoros Islands have ratified the statute from the Middle East.
Eleven signatories from the region, Iran, Israel, Syria, Kuwait, Yemen, UAE, Oman, Morocco, Bahrain and Algeria alongside Egypt have not yet ratified the statute.
The statute delineates the court’s jurisdiction to the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. According to Azer, it would be difficult to make an assignation between specific cases of human rights violations in Egypt and the parameters of the crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Even if the petition was to focus solely on the discrimination against Egypt’s Copts “the incidents are usually between civilians, he said. “There are shortcomings on the part of the police but it is not the police who are the perpetrators targeting a specific group.
Therefore a case cannot be made unless you are accusing them of war crimes or ethnic cleansing, and whether legally “you consider the individual to be representative of an entire group, he added.
Article 7 of the statute which defines crimes against humanity does indicate that systematic and widespread crimes such as murder, torture or enforced disappearance of persons perpetrated against the “civilian population do fall under the jurisdiction of the court.
Additionally, a provision of the article highlights that any attack directed at the civilian population means “a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts . against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack.
