Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA (AP) – President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan left South Africa with his plane scheduled to land back home Monday night, Sudan’s official news agency said, as the leader dodged a South African court’s effort to have him arrested on genocide and other charges.
The International Criminal Court’s charges against al-Bashir stem from reported atrocities in the conflict in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in the government’s campaign, according to United Nations figures.
In Geneva, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the ICC’s authority must be respected and its decision implemented.
An attorney for the South African government, William Mokhari, told a court Monday in South Africa’s capital that a judge’s order that al-Bashir should stay in the country was being obeyed and that there was no risk of al-Bashir “disappearing” while he attended an African Union summit in nearby Johannesburg.
But soon after he uttered those words, South African journalist Erika Gibson tweeted photographs of what she said was Sudan’s presidential jet taking off from a South African military base. Sudanese state media then said al-Bashir had left South Africa and that a news conference will be held at the Khartoum airport upon his arrival at 6 p.m. (1500 GMT, 11 a.m. EDT).