In case you think we here at Enough were too tough on Andrew Natsios, Elizabeth Rubin makes very clear that he has a long history of looking the other way on war crimes. From a roundtable discussion on The New Republic:
Let’s take the indictment of Ahmed Haroun as an example. As State Minister of Interior in 2003 and 2004, Haroun organized the Janjaweed to murder and destroy villages in Darfur. In February 2007, Ocampo indicted Haroun and Ali Koshayb, a Janjaweed militia leader and one of his henchmen. At first the Sudanese panicked. They dispatched an ambassador to Ocampo with a proposition: Suppose Haroun comes to the Hague and says he was only following instructions. Do you have to investigate the person who gave the instructions? i.e. Bashir. Now, the diplomats, including Andrew Natsios, instead of exploiting the Sudanese government’s panic as a negotiating tool, assuaged Bashir and his men. In effect, they said: Don’t worry about the prosecutor, just accept the peacekeepers and nothing will happen. The story would have been comedy if it did not involve so many deaths. The Sudanese officials were delighted by Natsios and decided to play hot potato with the arrest warrants, slamming the door on any messenger with an ICC envelope.
David Sullivan contributed to this post.