ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
The African Union (AU)’s Peace and Security Council has condemned last week’s arrest in London of Rwandan intelligence chief Emmanuel Karenzi Karake while on an official visit to the U.K.
The council "…considers it [Karake’s arrest] as not only an attack on a Rwandan national but on Africa as a whole," read a statement posted on the AU’s official website Saturday.
The arrest was made based on a warrant issued by a Spanish court, despite the fact that in January Spain’s National High Court overturned the earlier indictment of 40 senior Rwandan military officers and nullified all arrest warrants issued previously.
In the AU statement, the council expressed its "dismay that the U.K. went ahead with the arrest despite the [January] decision of Spain’s National High Court."
It went on to assert that the move was politically motivated and called for Karake’s immediate and unconditional release, warning that the intelligence chief’s arrest “threatens to reverse hard-won security and stability in Rwanda and in Africa as a whole.”
It also described the arrest as “…a blatant violation of the principle of universal jurisdiction by some non-African states against African government officials.”
Interpol had earlier said that it did not endorse the Spanish arrest warrants and would “not issue Red Notices against them [those indicted earlier].”
The arrest, the AU statement went on, “violates… the spirit of the agreement of April 2014 between the EU and Africa [signed] during the fourth EU-Africa summit held in Brussels, Belgium on political dialogue between the EU and Africa.”
According to Spanish Judge Fernando Andreu Merelles, who has initiated litigation against Karake at The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), the intelligence chief is guilty of ordering the murder of Rwandan politicians and court witnesses -- including a number of foreign nationals -- in the period between 1992 and 1994.
Like Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Karake is an Anglophone Tutsi who hails from the Ugandan diaspora.
In the mid-1990s, Karake was a leading member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a predominantly-Tutsi rebel movement.
AU vs. ICC
In a related development on June 15, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir escaped a South African court order for his arrest based on warrants issued by the ICC in 2008 and 2009.
In recent years, African leaders have been unanimous in their rejection of the ICC and its claimed jurisdiction.
Following al-Bashir’s departure from Johannesburg earlier this month, South Africa itself -- a signatory to the ICC’s founding charter -- threatened to withdraw its membership from the international tribunal unless the latter instituted a number of reforms.
