Indictments Quotes
Reaction to the indictments of several of his political associates who were subsequently convicted after this statement:
This quotation, in addition to posing a challenging political question, illustrates an oratorical technique that he was particularly good at. Instead of making declaratory and accusatory statements about the administration and their law enforcement record, he asks the question of how the actual outcome came about. The failure is then clear, and the accusation is made in the minds of many if not most of this audience.
He had been fired by the George W. Bush White House because he would not rush an indictment against a democratic politician to make the newspapers before the election that year. Unfortunately, many prosecutors will file a questionable case without sufficient evidence for a conviction. They get the newspaper headlines and TV coverage when they file the indictment, and little negative press when they person is found not guilty months or years later. The best prosecutors never will allow politics to influence their prosecution decisions, but there are still many who do.
While not all the indictments of the International Criminal Court were against Africans the majority were. Some African leaders thought that a double standard was being used against them. Banda’ observed that African unity was made extremely difficult as several heads of African states were indicted war criminals, and under the Rome Treaty which had been signed by most African nations obligated them to arrest indicted war criminals who were on their soil. So the African states could not hold a meeting of all African leaders without the host country being in the dilemma of whether or not to arrest them. In reality, in the decades leading up to this quotation, most of the worst atrocities did occur in Africa. The Presidents of the Sudan and Kenya were both indicted war criminals as well as some other officials and revolutionary group leaders. At the time the United States had not ratified the Treaty of Rome and this was not the best example for the Africans. However they had ratified it.
