By Carlos Ramirez Lopez and Walter Marquez
COMPLAINT AGAINST FATOU BOM BENSOUDA
Request suspension of ICC Prosecutor for committing crimes against humanity in Gambia
To process the suspension of Fatou Bensouda in her duties as prosecutor of the International Criminal Court –ICC- is what the criminal lawyer Carlos Ramírez López and the retired deputy to the National Assembly of Venezuela and president of El Amparo Foundation, Walter Márquez will request to the head of the Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM) of that international institution, Saklaine Hedaraly, after analyzing and consigning evidence that accuses the official as a serious human rights violator in her native country, Gambia.
“In accordance with paragraph 1, article 46 of the Rome Statute, relating to the functioning of the International Criminal Court, in accordance with Rule 24 paragraph 1 section a.ii, of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, we file this complaint against the Chief Prosecutor, for gross negligence in the exercise of her duties, for concealing information or circumstances of a sufficiently serious nature to have precluded her from holding office, and for having committed serious violations of human rights and crimes against humanity before her official functions, which are of a grave nature that causes damage to the standing of the Court” Marquez explained.
The complainants Ramírez and Márquez said that Bensouda participated in personal and direct actions in cruel acts that violate human rights as well as crimes against humanity committed against citizens of her own country, Gambia, during the military dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, between the years of 1994 and 2002, to whom she served in various positions of the judicial repression apparatus of the regime as Prosecutor, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, which was discovered following the actions of the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparation Commission (TRRC) approved by Law of the Gambia National Assembly, on December 13, 2017 and promulgated by the President of the Republic Adama Barrow, on January 13, 2018.
They indicated that on July 11, 2019, the JusticeInfo.Net media of the Hirondelle Foundation published a report under the signature of journalists Thierry Cruvelier and Mustapha K. Darboe, a citizen of Gambia, who included a chapter entitled “Will Fatou Bensouda face the Truth Commission in Gambia?” , in which they certify that several citizens of that country, including Batch Samba Jallow and Sainey Faye declared before said Commission that the current Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, personally participated in the serious human rights violations committed by the military regime.
The report notes that Bensouda joined the cruel dictatorship of this country in 1994, where multiple and serious human rights violations were committed through systematic practices of acts of torture, fabrication of evidence, illegal detentions, enforced disappearances and deaths in custody, and adds that the current ICC prosecutor only stopped participating in those criminal acts when in 2002 she was hired to work in the International Criminal Court for Rwanda, and then in 2004 when she was appointed Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court .
Venezuela, a similar case
Walter Márquez pointed out that in the unfortunate hours that Venezuela is living, because of crimes against humanity that the Nicolas Maduro Moros dictatorship has been executing, multiple complaints have been made before the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where Bensouda has not even presented the results of the preliminary examination of the case, because the Prosecutor committed similar crimes in her country, including: arbitrary detentions, covering up torture and violation of due process, accusing opponents of Yahya Jammeh’s regime of treason and denying them the right to defense by lawyers.
“That is why we turned to the head of the Independent Oversight Mechanism, to convey these specific facts that impute its holder Fatou Bensouda as a participant in similar situations in the Republic of The Gambia to those who have been denounced in relation to our country and before which she incurs in gross negligence and complicity due to omission, an attitude by which there is currently another ongoing disciplinary procedure in the presidency of the ICC, under number 2018 / PRES / 00370-16 ”, said Márquez.
Carlos Ramirez Lopez and Walter Marquez pointed out that the Rome Statute in its article 42.3 requires that the Prosecutor must have a “high moral consideration”, and the actions of Fatou Bensouda, are contrary to ethics and moral force that should guide this official position, where Bensouda is obliged to separate from the position for having been part of the judicial repression apparatus and committing serious human rights violations during the tyranny of Yahya Jammeh in Gambia, her country of origin.
Source: https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/truth-commissions/41754-time-for-the-truth-in-gambia.html