The Arrest of a Head of State Pursuant to an ICC Warrant. The Al-Bashir Case

This talk was given as part of the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) Seminar Series. Prof Lattanzi’s presentation will first deal with the question of immunities of high-ranking state officials as posed by the Commission created in 1919 by the Paris Peace Conference. In a next step, it will illustrate the facts of the Al-Bashir case with a particular emphasis on the questions posed by Jordan before the ICC appeals bench. The last and most sensitive part of the presentation will consider the argument that the ICC is not endowed with coercive powers in situations when the Rome Statute obligates a State to arrest and surrender to the Court a high-ranking state official.