Law News
US sees ICC in more benevolent light
"An international kangaroo court," thundered Sen. Jesse Helms. "A shady amalgam of every bad idea ever cooked up for world government," said Rep. Tom DeLay. The wrath of the two former conservative legislators was directed at the International Criminal Court around the time of its founding in 2002. As the comments suggest, the U.N.-mandated court presented a fat target for many in Congress - and the administration.
The concern was that American servicemen hunting down terrorists abroad might not be safe from politically motivated prosecutions. That concern remains, but the Bush administration is indicating a somewhat more benevolent overall view these days.
The court is the first permanent institution authorized to try individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. Defenders of the court see it as a sorely needed "trap for tyrants."
When the administration formally rejected U.S. participation in May 2002, war crimes Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper said, "We've washed our hands (of the ICC process); it's over."
Well, not quite. While standing by its core opposition to ICC's claimed jurisdiction over Americans, the administration has noted with satisfaction that the court has swatted aside efforts by some groups to encourage ICC prosecutions of Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.
It also has relaxed sanctions on member countries that have refused to sign agreements with the United States to forbid ICC prosecutions of Americans on their territory. U.S. military training programs in many countries that had been suspended were restored because the Pentagon concluded the restrictions were undermining efforts to combat terrorist threats.
The most obvious example of an American change in attitude concerns Sudan. In 2005, the administration dropped a long-running effort to create a "hybrid" U.N.-African Union court to try Sudanese war criminals, deciding instead to accept ICC jurisdiction in the country.
"At least as a matter of policy, not only do we not oppose the ICC's investigation and prosecutions in Sudan but we support its investigation and prosecution of those atrocities," said John Bellinger, the State Department's top legal adviser.
In February, the ICC's prosecutor plans to submit evidence of crimes against humanity in Sudan to the court's judges, who must review the evidence and decide whether the case should proceed. The administration may even cooperate directly with the ICC on Sudan in appropriate cases.
The State Department also strongly supports ICC indictments in 2005 of five Ugandans (one has since died) accused of war crimes in the country's two-decade-old civil conflict. "The ICC indictments (are) extremely important and it is part of the process of accountability, and ending impunity," said Jendayi Frazer, the department's top African affairs official, speaking in Northern Uganda last June. All four indictees are members of the Lord's Resistance Army, derided by President Bush this past March as a "barbaric rebel cult."
The verbal attacks by U.S. critics were particularly virulent in early 2002 at the outset of the struggle against terrorism. Thousands of U.S. troops were deployed in Afghanistan as part of that effort. As of three years ago, there were more than 350,000 U.S. troops serving abroad.
There was a strong feeling here that these troops did not need ICC prosecutors looking over their shoulders, on the alert for misdeeds. To the extent that U.S. troops engage in excesses, the critics argued, the United States has national judicial processes to deal with them. They cite the prosecutions of soldiers linked to the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq.
To some, it was particularly galling that the ICC claimed jurisdiction over Americans even though the United States was not a member of the court. On this point, the administration has been unbending in its opposition to the ICC. "Our policy toward the ICC has not changed," Bellinger says. "We are strongly opposed to the ICC's covering us. In that regard, our policy is crystal clear."
Source: Associated Press.
