Al-Bashir faces trial - but not for genocide

With nearly thirty years in power in Sudan, Omar al-Bashir has succeeded in becoming one of the world's most notorious dictators.

Oppression, torture and extrajudicial executions have been a red thread during his presidency, according to Jehanne Henry, Sudane expert at Human Rights Watch.

Political parties have been banned and opposites have been chased and imprisoned in informal detention centers.

- We have extensive documentation on the amounts of abuse committed under Omar al-Bashir's rule. There are countless victims who have never been cured, she says on the phone from Nairobi.

Omar al-Bashir was deposed in a military coup on April 11 this year. His departure had then been demanded for months by a relentless popular protest movement, which after a few hours of celebrations turned into shaky negotiations with the military transition council.

The demonstrations continued and the president, who was reported to be in house arrest in the presidential palace, fell into the media shadow. The prosecutor ruled that al-Bashir would face justice in a national court, according to the news agency AP - a message received with skepticism by human rights organizations.

For eleven years, Omar al-Bashir has been an internationally wanted man - prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC).

The ICC's indictment, unique in nature when it was directed at a sitting head of state, concerns the Sudanese military's bloody conflict against rebels in the troubled province of Darfur in western Sudan. The regime's warfare has largely been carried out with the help of feared local militias that burned villages, raped and killed.

Several of the militia's actions can be classified as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, according to the ICC. The conflicts are believed to have harmed around 300,000 lives, according to the UN, and forced close to three million people to flee.

Still, the likelihood that al-Bashir will ever be held accountable in The Hague is low. Despite repeated state visits in surrounding countries, he has never been handed over to the ICC.

The military transitional council in Sudan has said it will not do so either, according to Sudanese radio station Dabanga.

Instead, it is for crimes of an economic nature that Omar al-Bashir is now facing charges.

The lawsuit against him, which begins on Saturday, August 17, concerns allegations of corruption and possession of foreign currencies - which is contrary to the law he introduced himself in connection with a state of emergency in March, al-Jazira reported earlier in June.

The Prosecutor has previously stated that the prosecution may be expanded to affect human rights, according to the same source, but it is unclear when that would happen.

- The Sudanese lawyers I speak with giggle at this prosecution. The chance that it will result in some real justice is unlikely, it is most similar to a theater, says Jehanne Henry, and continues:

- There is room in the Sudanese law to accuse him of many of the human rights violations that he, and the system that supported him, have committed. But there is simply no political will to do so.