Government’s decision to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was "taken carefully" and was still to be approved by Parliament, court papers it lodged said. SA’s decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, was met with an outcry and was immediately and urgently challenged in court by the DA, supported by a number of legal nongovernmental organisations. The case is set down to be heard on Monday and Tuesday in the High Court in Pretoria. In legal argument, counsel for the government said the entire basis of the DA’s case — that government had by-passed Parliament when it gave notice that it would withdraw — was flawed. Government counsel Jeremy Gauntlett said it had not by-passed Parliament. "Parliament would always have been approached to approve the withdrawal (and) Parliament has indeed been approached immediately after the lodging of the notice." This was not a case in which accountability required judicial intervention, he said.
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