Hans Fabricius Archives - Jean-Jacques Cornish

AU summit delayed by legal battle over Bashir

Jean-Jacques Cornish — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 22:00:00 +0000

The official opening of the 25th African Union Summit in Sandton has been delayed by the legal battle the host country’s having over the presence of Sudan’s President Omar Al Bashir.
For the first time in the continental body’s history, leaders are meeting without advisors and officials.
Bashir is with them.

African leaders are waiting on Judge Hans Fabricius in the Pretoria High Court to rule on the propriety of a South African government declaration giving blanket immunity to all leaders and delegates attending the summit.
The proclamation gazetted last Thursday ties the hands of prosecutors waiting to spring on Bashir and arrest him on two International Criminal Court warrants in force alleging his involvement in genocide in Darfur.
The prosecutors say political interference is preventing them fulfilling their responsibility in terms of South African domestic law.

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Bashir to leave overnight

Jean-Jacques Cornish — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 22:00:00 +0000

Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir, who’s presence has turned the 25th African Union summit in Sandton on its head is not long for South Africa.
He’s expected to leave overnight despite the court ruling obliging him to stay until Judge Hans Fabricius rules whether South African authorities should meet their legal obligations and arrest him in terms of two International Criminal Court warrants still in force against him for alleged genocide in Darfur.

Highly placed South African sources are aware there will be consequences if Omar Al Bashir defies a court order by leaving.
But they say the ramifications of having to arrest the Sudanese President, if indeed the court rules this way, are far greater.
The degree to which Al Bashir surprised his African peers by arriving here was illustrated at lunch after today’s closed session where no place had been set for him.
He left with his entourage but returned to be welcomed by name by AU Commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

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Man dies on the day court ruling enables legal suicide

Jean-Jacques Cornish — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 22:00:00 +0000

Suffering from prostate cancer, a retired South African advocate has died on the same day that the Pretoria High Court ruled he could legally end his life.
His family did not say if he died before or after the judge passed what they called a ground-breaking judgment.
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The family of 65-year-old Robert Stransham Ford say he died peacefully in the presence of family and carers.
Dignity SA, which lobbies for assisted suicide legislation, specifies he dies of natural causes.
The organisation says it expects the ruling to set in motion the process of legalising assisted dying in South Africa
The High Court in Pretoria ruled that Stransham-Ford could have a doctor help him die and
that the doctor would be protected from prosecution.
Medically-assisted suicide remains illegal in South Africa, but there have
been growing calls for it to be legalised.
Judge Hans Fabricius saYS in his ruling that Stransham-Ford was entitled
to end his life, either by administration of a lethal agent or by providing
the applicant with the necessary lethal agent to administer himself.
Five years ago, a South African professor, Sean Davison, living in New Zealand was found guilty by a court there of helping his cancer-stricken mother take her own life.
He was placed under house arrest for five months.

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