The international criminal court has become a laughing stock in
Africa, once again, when it bizarrely indicted the wife of former Ivory
Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, Madame Simone Ehivert Gbagbo, 63, on
four counts of crimes against humanity.
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| Simone |
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| Azeb Mesfin |
In a charge widely
denounced across Africa as flawed, unjust and French fabricated, the ICC
accused the former first lady of being her husbands’ alter ego in
orchestrating a campaign of election violence where more than 3000
people lost their lives.
Madame Gbagbo has been in prison for the
past 18 months in Odienne town, north west Ivory Coast, on charges of
genocide and embezzlement.
Is the ICC starting to pick soft
targets? Frustrated by lack of co-operation to go after the continent’s
notorious war criminals; is the ICC targeting the weak, the meek and the
down trodden?
After Lewis Moreno Ocampo exited the ICC, Africa
expected more from the newly appointed chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda
in pursuing unresolved major cases such as going after Joseph Kony, and
in dealing with hordes of jittery genocidal Tigre warlords in Ethiopia,
who are left exposed by the sudden death of the fuehrer, Meles Zenawi.
Furthermore,
the arrest warrant issued for Simone Gbagbo who didn’t held political
office, while Ethiopia’s ferocious former first lady, the mastermind of
the 2005 election massacre walks free, is regarded as implementing the
one sided victor’s justice.
Dubbed the mother of corruption, Azeb
Mesfin worked as second-in-command of her late husband’s ethnocentric
regime, leading the 21 years ethnic cleansing campaign of western Gonder
with no fear of prosecution, and she is yet to be held to account.
When
her late husband lost elections, gave up the fight and fled to South
Africa with his three kids in 2005, Azeb Mesfin who held political
office with the power to make state decisions stayed behind alongside
the inner circle of the clannish junta, with whom she met frequently to
discuss the implementation and co-ordination of her evil plans, and was
repeatedly filmed directing military operations in Addis Ababa, where
more than 250 protesters were brutally killed by her dead husband’s
private militia known as the Agazit brigade.
Together with her
Hench men they targeted civilians and ethnic Amharics in particular,
whom they perceived as their mortal enemy.
On Zenawi’s so called
triumphant return on November 2005, during a victory parade in the
compound of the palace, Azeb appeared before a crowd of jubilant
warlords and praised herself, former Addis Ababa Meyer Arkebe ouqubay,
former security chief Kinfe Gebre Medhin, Gen Samora Younis and the
aging retard Sibehat Nega (all ethnic Tigres) as heroes of the “people’s
revolution.”
Besides getting involved in flagrant human rights
violations the former iron lady who until recently refused to vacate the
official residence of the PM, showing her middle finger to the confused
warlords, has also been accused of acquiring vast wealth through
corrupt practices.
How on earth is then the ICC turning a blind eye to such crimes, leaving millions of victims in search of justice?
How long is going to take for the ICC to deliver an evenhanded justice to the people of Africa?
Only time will tale.
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