Looks Like The International Criminal Court Is Going To Be Prosecuting Americans For Torture

Is the U.S. about to face a war crimes prosecution?

Flame WarIt’s somehow unsurprising that the era of “Making America Great Again” will likely kick off with the world community indicting Americans for war crimes for the first time in history. Just when the president-elect announced that he’d make the world safe to waterboard again, the international community had to show up with all their “post-War standards of basic human dignity” and spoil all of the greatness. Sad.

Anyway, the International Criminal Court released preliminary findings in November declaring that it had “reasonable basis to believe” that U.S. armed forces and intelligence personnel committed war crimes in Afghanistan and Eastern European black sites. This means the International Criminal Court’s crackerjack investigators have finally pierced the veil of secrecy that was Dick Cheney going on live TV and saying, “F**k yeah we do this stuff!”

Between two sections on investigations in the Ukraine and Colombia, November’s blistering report says CIA members “appear to have subjected at least 27 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon human dignity and/or rape” in Afghanistan and so-called “black sites” in Poland, Lithuania and Romania.

For [Senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights Katherine] Gallagher, the lumping of these countries together signals that the court’s top prosecutor Fatou Bensouda takes seriously her role to carve out no exceptions about its human-rights goals.

In practical terms, what this means going forward is that these matters will move to the ICC’s “investigation stage,” a more robust review of the facts surrounding these allegations that could result in indictments for American citizens to go on trial before the international tribunal. Gallagher believes, based on this report, that indictments could come down within a year.  So stay tuned to your Twitter accounts because I’ll bet Trump will have something to say about that development.

Now, you may be wondering how this all works given the steadfast refusal of the United States to ratify the ICC. Indeed, the American stance on the subject has always been to reject ICC jurisdiction as a non-signatory. But the ICC looks at these allegations and says, “Yeah, you might not be on board, but you know who is… Afghanistan, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania.”

As they say in real estate and gross violations of the Geneva Convention: “Location, Location, Location.”

A formal rebuke from an international tribunal could cripple U.S. soft power around the world in ways that could take years to undo. Despite its objections, it may be in the best interests of the United States to cooperate for the purpose of defusing the case before it becomes a permanent scarlet letter upon its international reputation.

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But obviously the United States won’t cooperate with this pesky investigation because what makes America great is its rich tradition of undermining its own credibility. It’s also likely that Afghanistan, which relies upon U.S. aid, will decline to aid investigators as well, ensuring that they remain a world pariah on the issue of human rights. Maybe this gambit will work and derail the case. But if investigators are able to move forward, this recalcitrant approach will only look worse.

So, sure, this could be a major foreign policy time bomb laid by the Bush administration, festered by the Obama administration (who could have prosecuted these matters and defused the ICC’s interest), and set to blow up in the Trump administration. Not good.

On the other hand, this can be the alt-right’s own private Nuremberg to fetishize! So that’s a thing.

Report Lays Groundwork for Indictments on U.S. Torture [Courthouse News Service]
Does an ICC investigation into US abuses in Afghanistan matter? [TRTWorld]

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