Human rights activists have accused the British government of a ‘shocking abdication’ of its commitment to justice after it emerged that Britain is backing moves by Libya, the Arab League and several African countries to halt the indictment of Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. But the government says it has adopted the controversial position to save lives in the western Sudan province where the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million others have been driven from their homes since 2003.

In July the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, applied for an international arrest warrant for Bashir - the first such move ever against a serving head of state – for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Under the Rome Statute that created the ICC, the Security Council has the power to stall such moves by the prosecutor for up to one year.