Complaint to ICC re US Alliance and Genocides

ACLU: The U.S. Is Acting Like an Authoritarian Regime by Barring ICC Officials Probing War Crimes

The Trump administration has barred International Criminal Court investigators from entering the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the U.S. will start denying visas to members of the ICC who may be investigating alleged war crimes by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In September, national security adviser John Bolton threatened U.S. sanctions against ICC judges if they continued to investigate alleged war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A 2016 ICC report accused the U.S. military of torturing at least 61 prisoners in Afghanistan during the ongoing war. The report also accused the CIA of subjecting at least 27 prisoners to torture, including rape, at CIA prison sites in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. We speak with Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

quote:

JAMIL DAKWAR: OK. I think this is unprecedented. This is the first time that the U.S. government is targeting foreign judges and prosecutors, personnel of an international—one of the most respected international judicial bodies in the world, with a travel ban. As far as we look back, there hasn’t been any kind of precedent for such a thing. They’re not only doing that. They’re also saying anyone who assisted the ICC, who worked or will work to push for accountability for investigation before the ICC with regard to the situation of Afghanistan, particularly looking at U.S. involvement in war crimes, will be subject to the same visa restrictions. So this is an act of a country that—similar to authoritarian regime. When you have—when you’re crushing dissent, when you’re going after those who are disagreeing with you, when you’re trying to punish and retaliate and intimidate those who are trying to hold you accountable, you use your powers in order to limit the way that they can do that. And that’s really very outrageous and very concerning to us, that this is reaching to this level.

But it also speaks to what this administration has been doing. I mean, this administration threatened with prosecuting judges and the prosecutors of the ICC for doing their job, and for doing the job that the United States should have done—that is, to investigate, credibly and thoroughly, war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed in the course of the war in Afghanistan, including the use of black sites, not only in Afghanistan. This is another important aspect of this investigation, or in pending investigation, because it hasn’t been really fully authorized by the pretrial chamber, is that it would cover not just what happened in Afghanistan, but it would cover in three countries that are linked to the conflict in Afghanistan—that is, Poland, Romania and Lithuania—because they are state parties. They joined the ICC in the—since 2002, when the court started to function.

So, we will see—we will see how this will play out. We’re very happy that the responses so far, in just the last few days, from members of the court, particularly European countries, have been very strong in condemning the Trump administration and upholding the independence and legitimacy of the court, and that any actions to deter prosecutors and the judges, that would be not acceptable and will be rejected by U.S. allies, particularly in Europe.

quote:

JAMIL DAKWAR: Well, first of all, let’s start with what Secretary Pompeo said. He said it’s an attack on our sovereignty. I don’t think that anyone attacked U.S. sovereignty. It was the Afghanistan sovereignty that has been subject to the jurisdiction, because Afghanistan joined the ICC in May of 2003 and agreed that if there would be war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide—these are the worst crimes that are defined under the ICC statute or their treaty—that they would be jurisdiction for the court. So, it’s not an issue of U.S. sovereignty. It’s not also an issue of protecting the constitutional right of American citizens who could be tried abroad. That’s not something that we see again and again. If you committed a crime abroad—you could be committing it anywhere in the world—you could be held accountable by those countries where you violated their criminal laws. And therefore, there is no such a thing of attacking or undermining American sovereignty.

The second thing is, is that Secretary Pompeo is saying there was no consent of the governments, that being—their nationals being prosecuted or investigated by the ICC in the future. Since when war criminals have to get their consent to a criminal investigation? That’s unheard of. So, the nature of the attacks, as you said, they are punitive, they’re retaliatory. They are trying to go and to send a message, not just to the ICC personnel, in particular. This actually has consequences beyond the United States’ situation, of U.S. government officials who commissioned, ordered or implemented acts of torture in Afghanistan and elsewhere. So it is really a serious threat to the system that we created. The United States was responsible for creating systems after World War II, after the horror of the Holocaust, that would fight impunity, that would combat the worst crimes. And now the U.S. is leading the charge in attacking the judges. And being cheered by what countries? Cheered by Sudan, Burundi, the Philippines.