Senior trial lawyer Jean-Jacques Badibanga, deputy prosecutor James Stewart, and chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, from left, wait for Jean-Pierre Bemba to enter the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, March 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Jerry Lampen, Pool)
With the genocide taking place in multiple countries and criminal regimes reigning in North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and numerous other places you would think the International Criminal Court would have a full docket. But you, my dear friend, would be very, very wrong. The newest focus of the ICC are alleged war crimes committed by US military personnel in Afghanistan over the past decade:
The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said Friday that she would request permission to open an Afghanistan investigation, a step that may lead to the court’s first indictments of Americans for war crimes.
The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has been collecting information on the war in Afghanistan for years. She has suggested before that she has evidence for a prosecution — not only of allegations of atrocities committed by combatants in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, the Afghan armed forces and the United States military, but of related crimes in other countries where C.I.A. operatives once held and tortured Afghan prisoners.
Ms. Bensouda said she would ask the judges in the court, which is based in The Hague, for authorization to pursue a formal investigation. If they agree, the Afghanistan investigation and any resulting indictments could pose a legal test for the United States — which does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction — to cooperate with it, especially if any defendants are American.
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Some lawyers speculated that Ms. Bensouda’s timing on Afghanistan was meant partly to demonstrate to Africa that she is also focusing her attention elsewhere.
(As a note, Bensouda’s son, a thug and drug dealer, was killed in 2014 in a Darwinian inspired incident in St. Paul, MN, where he lived. Coincidence that she’s going after America?)
Indeed, send a signal to a conglomeration of Third World sh** holes that you are being fair by attacking the evil Yankees. This has part of the Third World playbook for seventy years.
The stated purpose of the ICC is to provide a forum for trying significant crimes when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the Court. Neither of those cases applies to the United States.
Fortunately, nothing much will come of this. The United States does not recognize the ICC and while the Obama administration, being the feckless, anti-American douchenozzles they were, were trying to push for US subservience, it is very unlikely that the Trump administration will go along with this adventure. I do hope Trump declares total war on this grotesque parody of a legal tribunal, destroys it and salts the earth where it stood.
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