Justice delayed

ONE of Africa’s nastiest rulers, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, would now have been in the dock of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, where he has long belonged, had it not been for the disgraceful behaviour of the government of South Africa this week. Mr Bashir had been indicted by the court for a genocide in which, according to the UN, about 300,000 people perished in his country’s western region, Darfur. Atrocities by his henchmen—mostly Arabs hunting down black Africans—are still taking place. South Africa was an eager founding signatory of the statute that created the court in the wake of tragedies such as the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the horrors of apartheid itself. By letting Mr Bashir return safely home instead of arresting him when he visited South Africa on June 13th for a meeting of the African Union (AU), the government has damaged not only the ICC and the cause of international justice but also its own reputation for upholding the rule of law.It was a close-run thing. Mr Bashir has sought to undermine the ICC by visiting countries in Africa and the Middle East on the presumption that they would abide by the bad old rule that fellow strongmen protect each other. So a red-carpet welcome to the South African gathering, attended by half the continent’s leaders, was a brazen act of defiance against the court. To the credit of South Africa’s own courts and its vigorous human-rights champions, it soon became clear that, unless Mr Bashir fled to Sudan, he might well have been seized. A South African judge issued a warrant for his arrest, swatting aside a spurious claim by the government that Mr Bashir had immunity during his visit. But he had already fled.