Dubai: The issuing of an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir is "a grave precedent" that will open a Pandora's Box in the largest African country, Arab legal experts and international law specialists say.
Al Bashir's case, as the latest Arab leader to face international legal action, will plunge the whole Arab region into an era of "legal invasion", experts added.
Now, "the simplest scenario would be subjecting Sudan to more pressures, like those targeting Libya during [the] Lockerbie [case]," Jordanian international law professor Gassan Jundi said, referring to the blowing up of a Pan-Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, after which Libya was largely isolated.
However, the concern is that "Sudan is not a united country like Libya, and there are fears that the country will [become even more] divided. [Then], the Western countries will regret Al Bashir's indictment, because it will open a Pandora's Box," Jundi continued.
"What I am afraid of is that we stand on the threshold of a new era in the Arab region, and this era is called legal invasion," Jundi said.
Experts noted that the previous era of attacks on the Arab world was led by the UN Security Council, which passed multiple resolutions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was supported by further resolutions, as were the sanctions imposed against Libya.
Al Bashir is the second Arab leader to be accused of similar charges in the past decade. Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain faced trial and was later executed on December 30, 2006, sending shock waves through the Arab countries.
"Sudan is being targeted like Iraq was before," said Hani Raslan, head of Sudanese studies at the Cairo-based Al Ahram Strategic Studies Centre. "Sudan is looked at as a country that is bigger than it should be," he told Gulf News.
He strongly believes that the aim of the "arrest warrant is to divide the country from within and then dismantle it into smaller countries".
The country's wealth of natural resources is still unexploited and unutilised, experts noted. The arrest warrant was issued on multiple charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
