Johannesburg — CLAIMS that the International Criminal Court was primarily and selectively targeting Africa were "troubling" but "did not bear scrutiny", Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo said on Friday.

The court, formed in 2002 under the Rome Statute, was denounced by the African Union when its prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir for atrocities committed in Darfur. Commentators questioned why all the ICC's investigations and cases were African.

It was also argued that the warrant would derail the fragile peace process in Sudan.

But Chief Justice Ngcobo said "abuses committed in sub-Saharan Africa have been among the most serious, and this is certainly a legitimate criterion for the selection of cases." In many cases, he said, the ICC is involved in African affairs "at the invitation of the states themselves".

Of the five "situation countries" targeted by the ICC for action, the cases of three of them - the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic - had been referred to the ICC by the governments of those countries.

Justice Ngcobo said the governments of these countries were "aware of their international obligations" and had invited the ICC "with full knowledge of the ramifications."

He said Kenya had also signed the Rome Statute into its domestic law "with full knowledge of the potential consequences, including the possibility of investigation by the prosecutor". Political violence that took place in Kenya after that country's election in 2008 is the subject of an ICC investigation, but not at the request of its government.

The chief justice was speaking at a conference on the future of international criminal justice in Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand.

International criminal justice was "crucial to the preservation of peace and the attainment of justice," he told his audience.

The existence of arrest warrants for leaders suspected of war crimes, he said, did not necessarily preclude peace talks. Nor did ignoring justice necessarily benefit the peace process.

Moreover, pursuing international criminal justice could lead to enhanced domestic law enforcement - strengthening the rule of law which was "key" to long-term stability.

But, he said, he recognised that it was "perhaps too early to draw any firm conclusions about the ICC's legacy in countries where investigations are ongoing".