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Africa must establish its own International Criminal Court (ICC) which would be mandated to prosecute Western leaders who have committed crimes on the continent, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said.
His remarks came a few days after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir evaded an ICC arrest order by leaving early from an African Union summit that was held in Johannesburg.
At the summit, Mugabe wanted a mass withdrawal of African states from the ICC.
According to Zimbabwe’s Chronicle newspaper, Mugabe, who is also the chairman of the African Union (AU), said it was high time Africa set up a criminal court which would seek justice for “serious” war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the West, particularity during the colonial era.
His words: “They committed crimes, colonial crimes galore – the slaughter of our people and all that imprisonment… I have a case, why was I imprisoned for 11 years? We forgave them, but perhaps we’ve not done ourselves justice… You set up the ICC, we set our ICC to try Europeans, to try Mr [George] Bush and Mr [Tony] Blair”
Mugabe stated the International Criminal Court was a court for Western countries, dispensing Western injustice on Africans.