Mohammed Mahidi Akef, the Supreme Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has called on governments not to participate in the International Criminal Court (ICC) which recently issued an arrest warrant for the Sudanese President on charges of genocide in Darfur. Mr. Akef blamed the decision on “American and Zionist policies.” According to the a report on the Egyptian Brotherhood website:
Mr. Mahdi Akef (Leader of Muslim Brotherhood Group) has called all Arab and Islamic states as well as Eastern and Western states members of the Hague International Criminal Court to walkout, in order not to participate in a double standard discriminatory court that issues its decision on an unbalanced scale according to the American and Zionist policies. He rejected, in a statement to Ikhwanweb, the decision to arrest the Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir, emphasizing that this exceeds law limits, justice and political decorum and is a part of an unending double standard series the new world order follows. The chair stressed that the prosecutor in this case is politically blackmailing the entire Arab nation, not only Sudan, and this is the main reason for the trial, not as alleged to prosecute a war criminal. If it was true that the ICC has an actual rule it should have sought the arrest of American officials and their allies for their crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the same should be applied on the officials of the Zionist entity for their crimes in Palestine and in Gaza in particular. Akef called on Arab and Islamic countries to take a unified stance rejecting the court’s decision and declaring solidarity with Sudan, not for Al Bashir but in defence of the Arab and Islamic will facing the attempts to make the nation kneel down and to blackmail governments and regimes. This requires a unified stance for governments to stand together with their people to prove that they can be trustworthy.
As discussed in earlier posts Akef, as well as elements of the global Muslim Brotherhood, have defended the Sudanese President and attacked the ICC on other occasions in relation to Darfur. Hassan Al-Turabi however, a former influential member of the global Muslim Brotherhood, has accused the Arab world of ignoring the Darfur issue and called for the prosecution of the Sudanese President by the ICC.