The pending global arrest warrants issued against Sudan's President Omar al Bashir and Libya's President Muammar Gaddafi are some of the high-profile cases that Uganda is banking on to successfully prosecute, as it seeks to become a beacon of justice in East Africa.

Speaking to ChinAfrica from Kampala, capital of Uganda, the spokesperson of the Uganda Judiciary, Justice Elias Kisawuzi, said the International War Crimes Tribunal gazetted on May 31 had the muscle to try the two African heads of state "if the cases are referred to Kampala."

Kisawuzi said that under the principle of complementarity under the Rome Statute, Uganda had jurisdiction to try war criminals in their land. The Rome Statute is the international agreement that sets up the International Criminal Court (ICC). Uganda domesticated the Rome Statute through the ICC Act back in 2010.

"We have jurisdiction," said Kisawuzi, who is also the registrar of Uganda's Court of Appeal. Gaddafi, his son Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Al-Senussi are wanted at The Hague for crimes against humanity, mainly murder and persecution, allegedly committed across Libya from February 15, 2011 until at least February 28, 2011, through the state apparatus and security forces. The arrest warrants were issued on June 27.

However, despite the ICC's arrest warrant, it is unlikely that Gaddafi will be tried in the Ugandan tribunal. This is because it is for the Libyan Government to petition the UN to refer the case from The Hague to Uganda, something which the UN Security Council will have to look at closely and then convince Louis Moreno-Ocampo, ICC Prosecutor, to let go of the cases. If approved, then Gaddafi will be headed to Uganda to stand trial.

But first, Gaddafi has to be arrested. And for now, it is unlikely that he can be arrested inside Libya. Only if he moves out of Libya to any of the nations that have ratified the Rome Statute [as of January 2011, 114 states are members of the Court and a further 34 states have signed but not ratified the treaty], can the government of the receiving country be obligated, under ICC treaty, to arrest him.

On the other hand, Bashir is being held responsible for war crimes including "intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property." His warrant was issued on March 4, 2009 and Uganda has told him that the next time he sets foot in Kampala, he will be arrested.

But before Uganda goes for the international high-profile cases of presidents Bashir and Gaddafi, it will have to focus on its own backyard and prosecute the runaway fugitive of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group that has been terrorizing President Yoweri Museveni's government for close to two decades.

According to Kisawuzi, beginning July 7, a former LRA commander Thomas Kwoyelo was to be the first person on the dock of the tribunal once the Director of Public Prosecution, Richard Butera, completes the collection of evidence.

"He [Butera] will bring more cases against more people, and it will all depend on the evidence available," Kisawuzi told ChinAfrica via telephone.

The International War Crimes Tribunal, formerly just a division of Uganda's High Court, does not have the clout of the United Nations Tribunal on Sierra Leone or the International Crimes Tribunal in Rwanda (the one sitting in Arusha). It is ideally a national judicial system, which can try suspects of crimes against humanity if they set foot in Uganda or if the crimes were committed in Uganda.

"The first legal question is whether a national court adjudicating under the universal jurisdiction principle still exercises 'national jurisdiction' under the more limited sense of the complementarity provisions of the Rome Statute. That could well be disputed, because the legitimacy of the two courts is very different in size," Alexander Eichener, a German lawyer with deep knowledge in the ICC procedure, told ChinAfrica.

But he reckoned that over the last two decades, the "principle of 'universal jurisdiction' has very slowly, but increasingly steadily gained acceptance in national jurisdictions."

"Its origins date back at least into the great time of international public law (17th century), and are exemplified in the famous example of pirates designated as 'hostes humani generis' and therefore triable by all sea-faring nations," Eichener said.

 (Reporting from Kenya)

African States - Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Source: International Criminal Court