Last week a story leaked to the two main influential newspapers in the United States; The Washington Post and The New York Times. The story said that the International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre Trial chambers had issued an arrest warrant on President Omar Bashir of Sudan, paving way for the first sitting head of state to be arrested for crimes committed against his own people. Shortly after, the ICC in The Hague issued a denial saying no arrest warrant had yet been issued.

As a flurry of news swept the world, I remembered an encounter with the man who has vowed to bring down President Bashir.

Last September at the UN General Assembly I was in a lift at the United Nations Plaza, where my other office is suited. I was headed to the fourth floor. As is the norm during this time of the year, there are so many diplomats who mainly accompany their heads of state. The security checks you endure are a story for another day.

In the lift I saw a person I knew. Short, with some curly white hair; we exchanged greetings. He too was headed to the fourth floor. For a big man that he is, he did not know that that same evening we would be meeting to discuss the possible indictment of the first sitting head of state. The man in the lift was the ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

That same evening with a group of other invitees we headed to Brooklyn, one of the boroughs of New York. There, Ocampo was to address thousands of Darfurians who are refugees in United States. They had prepared a sumptuous meal; the Darfurian way. As Ocampo arrived, the whole building was in total confusion. People began singing. They chanted Allah in different tones and voices.

At the entrance, Ocampo was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and the clapping that welcomed him. Inside the building there were posters describing him as their messiah. There were posters that said Bashir is a criminal that should be languishing in the coolers of The Hague. I sat in stoic silence observing the action unfold.

When he began speaking his Argentinean accent, as expected he did not disappoint. To the applause of his audience, he swore that he will do whatever he can to bring Bashir to justice. Speaker after speaker praised him as their God-sent saviour. He nodded in approval. Women who had escaped from Darfur gave, sometimes in graphic detail, accounts of what they had gone through at the hands of the notorious Janjaweed militia.

When it was question time, there were so many hands up in the air, I wondered whether the ICC Prosecutor would answer all. He did. I did not want to ask him my question here. I felt because of his near super star status here, this was not the place to put him in the dock. It would have deflated his ego. The next day we had another smaller meeting with him and that is where I intended to ask him.

The next day I got my chance. I asked him whether his prosecutorial policy was not akin to politics. How does a prosecutor behave as though he was fighting a war instead of following through the law? I wanted to know whether he had the capacity to try a sitting President when he has stumbled in handling the case of Thomas Lubanga, the Congolese rebel leader who is in The Hague accused of using child soldiers in eastern DR Congo.

I wanted to know whether he had the full grasp of the case against the Lord's Resistance Army and whether he was not caught in a public relations gimmick with the Uganda Government. I wanted to know who would hand over Bashir to the ICC when the arrest warrant was issued other than confining him, till death, as the president of Sudan since the fear of an arrest was enough to make him remain put.

Had his office taken care of the many victims who had cooperated with the court and would get the backlash of issuing an arrest warrant?

Throwing his arms in the air, he said there are different players in the world of justice. There are those who bring the case to the court and those who do the arresting. There are those who keep an eye on the victims and those who do the analysis of the best way to prosecute.

His role was one: to prove his case before the judges at the ICC and the rest is for the world to handle. So was there any difference with what he had done the previous day when he met Darfurians?

Soon the rumour about the arrest warrant will be confirmed. And President Bashir will probably retain the leadership of his NCP party in this years' election, and the geopolitics of keeping the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South Sudan will certainly put world leaders in a catch 22.

Dismas Nkunda, The author is a human rights expert and specialist on refugee issues