The Gambia-born deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bom Bensouda, emerged on Thursday as the consensus candidate to replace current ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina whose term ends next year.
Bensouda who is the African Union endorsed candidate is seen as the favourite to land the ICC top job.
Earlier in the week, the ICC announced that the four candidates who were originally short-listed had been whittled down to two. Bensouda faced a strong contender in her African counterpart Mohamed Chande Othman of Tanzania.
The other candidates were Canada’s Robert Petit and United Kingdom’s Andrew Cayley.
According to reports, the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute that set up the court convened in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment which will be made at a formal session of the 118-nation ASP in the same city on 12 December.
Bensouda, 50, is a former Gambian Justice Minister, who was named deputy prosecutor of the Hague-based ICC in 2004. She previously worked as legal adviser and trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania.
If her appointment is confirmed, she would be the first African to land the top ICC job since it was established in 2002.
The ICC and particularly its chief prosecutor Ocampo have been criticized for apparently exclusively targeting the continent. It has over the years courted controversy for apparently picking on cases mainly involving African leaders.
It issued two arrest warrants against a sitting head of state, Omar Al Bashir of Sudan for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and for genocide committed in Darfur region (west) where an estimated 300,000 people were killed and Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast for war crimes in the course of a political crisis over disputed elections. Gbagbo was on Tuesday extradited to The Hague to face war crimes charges.
Other controversial ICC cases are those involving top Kenyan officials indicted for the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya, crimes alleged to have been committed during the uprising which toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and war crimes in DR Congo between 1998-2003.
PS: one of my stories when covering the Gambian elections. First published by www.apanews.net
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