The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is expected to seek an arrest warrant today charging Sudanese President Omar Bashir with orchestrating violence in Darfur that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead since 2003, according to news reports.

The mere thought of having the Sudanese president indicted by the ICC for allegedly being responsible for crimes against humanity or genocide is enough to sound alarm bells around the globe and send warning signals to countries that would be interested in joining the international tribunal.

For starters, non-party states to the ICC cannot escape its jurisdiction by opting to stay out, since the UN Security Council can place them under the ICC’s jurisdiction by a resolution, as indeed happened to Sudan in the aftermath of the Darfur crisis.

It is alleged that no less than 300,000 people have been killed since the crisis in Darfur started in 2003. Many more have become internally displaced and even more have fled to Chad.

For state parties of the 1998 Final Statute of the ICC (Rome Statute) it is also problematic, since they are legally obligated to arrest any person indicted by the ICC prosecutor and hand him over to the court to stand trial and face punishment if found guilty of the charges levelled against him.

In the case of the Sudanese leader, the issue is even more controversial since a state party to the ICC, like Jordan, is legally bound to detain the Sudanese president if he is ever on its territory during a state visit or conference.

This raises very complex and disturbing diplomatic challenges that would have far-reaching implications on the Arab front.

Membership in the ICC is therefore fraught with dangers and challenges that should be factored in before any Arab state ventures into becoming a state party to the Rome Statute.

Jordan may have not fully considered the implications of its membership in the ICC, but other Arab states will surely think twice before plunging into the unknown in light of the possibility that an Arab head of state could be indicted by the ICC.