International Criminal Court Prosecutor Warns Libya voa voanews.com, March 3, 2011
The International Criminal Court has opened its official investigation into possible crimes against humanity being committed in Libya. The prosecutor has warned those in power there-including Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, his sons and his inner circle-that they could face prosecution if they commit crimes or fail to prevent them.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s message was clear: There will be no impunity in Libya.
"We are witnessing a new situation where the world is united," Ocampo said. "No one can attack civilians, no one has authority to attack and massacre civilians."
The specific allegations the prosecutor is investigating are attacks by security forces on peaceful demonstrators, what he says could amount to a crime against humanity.
Moreno-Ocampo named incidents his office has been investigating since Sunday: including a 15th of February attack in Benghazi and one in the Libyan capital Tripoli on the 20th. And he named the names of people who have authority over those allegedly committing the crimes, people who could one day be called to account before the court. Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo:
"They are Moammar Gadhafi , his inner circle, including some of his sons, who had de facto authority. But also people with formal authority that should pay attention to the crimes committed by their people, because if they’re not preventing, punishing, stopping these crimes, they could be responsible according to the law," Ocampo explained
"US Supports War Crimes Tribunal for First Time" by Edith M. Lederer AP, March 2, 2011
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. resolution imposing tough sanctions against Libya marked the first time that the United States has given its support to the International Criminal Court and signified a remarkable turnaround, though it includes a key exemption demanded by the Obama administration.
The resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council on Saturday refers the actions of Moammar Gadhafi's regime since Feb. 15 to the court's prosecutor who must decide whether there is enough evidence of alleged crimes against humanity to warrant a full investigation. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is required to deliver an initial report to the council in two months.
"It's a historic vote by the United States government because it's the first time in a Security Council resolution the United States has voted affirmatively on the side of the International Criminal Court," said Richard Dicker, head of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. "That's a positive step."
But the United States insisted on including a provision in the resolution to protect Americans from investigation or prosecution by the International Criminal Court, known as the ICC. It requires that any citizen of a country that hasn't joined the ICC be investigated or prosecuted in his home country - not by the ICC - for any alleged actions stemming from operations in Libya authorized by the Security Council.
Dicker called this "carve-out" for nationals from countries that aren't parties to the ICC "troubling" though limited since it only deals with the current situation in Libya.
"If, for example, there is a no-fly zone established by the council, and the U.S. dropped bombs and accidentally killed 100 Libyan school children, that U.S. airman or those who ordered the attack would be subject to the jurisdiction exclusively of a U.S. court - not the ICC," Dicker told the AP on Tuesday.
And so it appears that the US under the Obama Regime still does not give full support to the ICC.
Some of the rationale by American officials for not supporting the ICC are quite dubious or flat out lies and propaganda. For instance the argument that the ICC mandate contravene the US Constitution or US laws is not true. The Constitution explicitly states that any international agreement, treaties or other legal instruments ratified by the US legislature is binding as being US law.
The jurisdiction of US courts and government are protected as long as there is a sincere effort made to bring to trial those Americans who have committed such grievous crimes and that due process is followed and if found guilty those convicted would receive a fair and just punishment as befitting the nature of crimes committed.
Of course the Obama administration is reluctant for this reason to become an unconditional signatory to the ICC because Obama has refused to investigate crimes committed against humanity by the Bush/Cheney Regime and possibly similar crimes committed by the Obama Regime ie abuse and torture of detainees, ignoring due process, pursuing Wars of Aggression etc.
The main issue for America is that its officals, government personnel including the CIA, Special Operations, the Pentagon and the US military should in essence in their view be free from the jurisdiction of the ICC.
President Obama is being cautious about giving full endorsement to the ICC because he fears the ICC might insist on investigating Americans or American institutions for taking part in various crimes against humanity
- ie
* abuse and torture of POWs or enemy combatants
* the wanton disregard for civilian safety during military operations ie USA in Iraq, Afghanistan & Pakistan
* By giving aid to organizations engaged in terrorist actions Ie supporting various dictators or authoritarian regimes or individuals or groups ie Pakistan's ISI or the War Lords in Afghanistan
* or having committed the crime of an unnecessary war which could be characterized as a War of aggression ie US invasion and occupation of Iraq
* or the use of banned weapons such as land mines, cluster bomb, phosphorous (Napalm) especially on or near civilian populations
* or giving moral or material or tacit support for renegade military or police units which could be characterized as "Hit Squads" or Death Squads or the illegal use of extra-judicial killings and assassinations especially as covert operations in a non-compliant nation in which the US was not given any sort of approval.
International Criminal Court website
The International Criminal Court (ICC), governed by the Rome Statute, is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.
The ICC is an independent international organisation, and is not part of the United Nations system. Its seat is at The Hague in the Netherlands. Although the Court’s expenses are funded primarily by States Parties, it also receives voluntary contributions from governments, international organisations, individuals, corporations and other entities.
The international community has long aspired to the creation of a permanent international court, and, in the 20th century, it reached consensus on definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials addressed war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War.
In the 1990s after the end of the Cold War, tribunals like the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were the result of consensus that impunity is unacceptable. However, because they were established to try crimes committed only within a specific time-frame and during a specific conflict, there was general agreement that an independent, permanent criminal court was needed.
On 17 July 1998, the international community reached an historic milestone when 120 States adopted the Rome Statute, the legal basis for establishing the permanent International Criminal Court.
The Rome Statute entered into force on 1 July 2002 after ratification by 60 countries.
The US administrations to say the least are and have been skeptical about the jurisdiction and the operations of the court.
From the first line on the About page we can see the difficulty for the US and that is " international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community." Successive American administrations fear that the United States and its personnel including the CIA and military would no longer be able to operate as they see fit with a gurantee of immunity from American or international law.
The problem for the rest of the nations around the globe is that the US is the only superpower and therefore has in its actions a great deal of influence.
If the US refuses to sign on to various multinational or international agreements and treaties it is therefore near to impossible to impose such treaties and agreements on other nations.
Why should someone like Saddam, or Mubarak or Qaddafi be answerable to the ICC when members of the US government including the executive branch the DOJ, the CIA and pentagon are excempt from investigation or prosecution by the ICC ?
Obama & Bush Agree About International Criminal Court that it applies to everybody except America
US turn around on ICC with a major caveat of course -Qaddafi and others who are guilty of human rights abuses, torture , war crimes etc. could be brought to trial before the International Criminal Court but actions of the personnel taking action against Qaddafi and his supporters if they are from a nation not a signatory to the ICC could not be held accountable by the ICC..
President Clinton had signed to support the ICC but President Bush revoked America's support for the ICC.
Bush had promised no American would ever be brought before the ICC.
Obama had promised the former Bush Regime members and the FBI and CIA and the Pentaon that international law , the Geneva Conventions, the special convention on torture and the ICC had no jurisdiction over agents or employees of the American government.
US keeps its rogue nation status
does that mean that any crimes committed by non-libyans are not prosecutable by the ICC from this point on or from before the resolution was passed
also remember Obama insists Pakistan return an American citizen who murded two people and was working for special ops CIA as a spy as an assassin - when an American kills someone in another country or acts as a spy this is no crime.
There's something wrong with a nation that writes its own rules. Such nations are referred to as Rogue Nations such as Qaddafi's Libya or Egypt under Mubarak or Pakistan
The US has been reluctant to fully endorse the ICC and during the Bush/Cheney Regime Bush took measures to try to ensure no American working on behalf of the U.S. government could be forced to stand trial before the ICC.
Here's a relevant article from Wikipedia on Bush's argument regarding the jurisdiction of the ICC.
One of the bills passed even allows for the U.S. government to use its military to supposedly rescue any American citizen being held/ incarcerated by the court.
If the U.S. can extract someone from the Hague by force then other countries would be able to do the same.
Given this scenario the German government after WWII could have used force to extract German citizens being held under the Nuremberg rulings and given this scenario it would according to the US government that Libyan nationalists could carry out a raid on the Hague if Qaddafi or any other Libyan national was held in the Hague.
If the USA can make such demands why can't other nations do the same and thereby rendering the court completely toothless as it were.
ICC wikipedia United States and the International Criminal Court
Efforts to shield Americans from ICC jurisdiction
In 2002 the United States began to undertake measures to shield U.S. nationals from prosecution by the ICC.
American Service Members Protection Act
In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including prohibitions on the United States providing military aid to countries which had ratified the treaty establishing the court; however, there were a number of exceptions to this, including NATO members, major non-NATO allies, and countries which entered into an agreement with the United States not to hand over U.S. nationals to the Court (see Article 98 agreements below). ASPA also excluded any military aid that the U.S. President certified to be in the U.S. national interest. Limits on military assistance have been repealed, as outlined below.
In addition, ASPA contained provisions prohibiting U.S. co-operation with the Court, and permitting the President to authorize military force to free any U.S. military personnel held by the court,[21] leading opponents to dub it "The Hague Invasion Act." The act was later modified to permit U.S. cooperation with the ICC when dealing with U.S. enemies.
On October 2, 2006 President Bush issued waivers of these same IMET prohibitions with respect to 21 nations. Foreign Military Funds (FMF) restricted under ASPA were not affected by the 2006 waivers or the ASPA amendment. On October 17, 2006 President Bush signed into law an amendment to ASPA as part of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 removing International Military Education and Training (IMET) restrictions for all nations. On November 22, 2006 President George W. Bush issued ASPA waivers with respect to the Comoros and Saint Kitts and Nevis, followed by a similar waiver with respect to Montenegro on August 31, 2007.see more of this article below.
On January 28, 2008 President Bush signed into law an amendment to the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA) to eliminate restrictions on Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to nations unwilling to enter into Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) shielding US nationals from the jurisdiction of the ICC. Section 1212 of HR 4986 effectively gutted from ASPA all of the provisions which threaten nations with the loss of military assistance of any kind for refusing a BIA.
----
Meanwhile for all their empty rhetoric about the freedom of the internet and social media the US is again using its resources to further infiltrate the internet to attack what the US officials believe to be extremist bloggers overseas that is non-American. Their reassurance that they are not going to go after law abiding American bloggers is of little comfort because it depends on their interpretation of who is or is not extremists or not law abiding .
So any blogger who has strong opinion on issues and who may have some tenuous connection to an extremist blogger overseas may be determined as a national security threat.
The connection could be a matter of the blogger responding to comments about their blog made by extremists . So if the blogger engages in a discussion with someone who unbeknown-st to them are extremists is the blogger to be held responsible.
Is a blogger to be held accountable if some extremists were to post on their blog something from an innocent blogger using the innocent bloggers post as fodder for their own extremists views.
This is similar to the issue of an individual giving donations to a supposedly ostensibly humanitarian aid group which unbeknownst to them is or has been or in the future funnels part or all of the donations to some extremist pro-terrorist group.
The other issue is that for users of social media being aware that the US government and the governments security/intelligence groups are using similar tactics on the web one's confidence in using the web could undermined because there are agents everywhere trying to find reasons for shutting down specific users so that an off the cuff comment on Face Book or Twitter could be used against a user. One might wonder if what the intelligence security community do indeed want to send a chilling message to those who use the social media on the net.
So these agencies would either censor users outright or create an environment in which self-censorship becomes a real concern since anything you or I say can be used against us by those agencies trawling the internet.
"Spy Bloggers Not ‘Friending’ U.S. Targets, Centcom Says" by Jeff Stein via CommonDreams.org, March 2, 2011
The U.S. Central Command says its new “Persona” social media "infiltration" software is designed to cozy up to extremist bloggers overseas, not law-abiding Americans chatting on Facebook or similar sites.
Earlier this month, the Web buzzed with a report that the software was designed to “manage ‘fake people’ on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues,” implying that the Defense Department was targeting critics of the war in Afghanistan and other conflicts.
Further compounding a sinister view of the software was the discovery of e-mails from the head of a company implicated in “dirty tricks” against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and a pro-labor organization, which discussed how such technology could be used.
"There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas...” wrote Aaron Barr, the chief executive officer of HBGary Federal, a Colorado Springs company whose hacked e-mails revealed plans to attack critics of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Article at Wikipedia on the USA and the ICC. International laws, agreements and treaties are not binding on the USA but are on other nations.
ICC wikipedia United States and the International Criminal Court
The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is a permanent international criminal court, founded in 2002 by the Rome Statute to investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of having committed genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
As of October 2010, 114 states are members of the Court and a further 34 countries have signed but not ratified the Rome Statute.[1] Countries such as India, Indonesia, and China have not signed or ratified the Rome Statute.[1] The United States is in the unique position of having signed the Rome Statute, but formally withdrawn its current intention of ratification.[1]
Positions in the United States concerning the ICC vary widely. The Clinton Administration signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not submit it for Senate ratification. The Bush Administration, the US administration at the time of the ICC's founding, stated that it would not join the ICC. The Obama Administration has re-established a working relationship with the court and has called for continued "positive, principled engagement".[2]
Alleged Problems with US Ratification of the Rome Statute
Claimed lack of due process
The Republican activist group "RenewAmerica", run by supporters of U.S. Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, has accused the court of not protecting defendants' human rights, particularly:[15]
allegations of absence of jury trials
allegations of retrials allowed for errors of fact
allegations that hearsay evidence is allowed
allegations of no right to a speedy trial, a public trial or reasonable bail
Supporters of the ICC say that the ICC Statute contains the due process rights found in the US Constitution and now well recognized in international standards of due process in Article 67 Rome Statute, with the exception of the American right to jury trial.
Former U.S. State Department Legal Advisor Monroe Leigh has said:
The list of due process rights guaranteed by the Rome Statute are, if anything, more detailed and comprehensive than those in the American Bill of Rights. . . . I can think of no right guaranteed to military personnel by the U.S. Constitution that is not also guaranteed in the Treaty of Rome.[16]
The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee specific rights to its military in the scope of this article, as do Status of Forces Agreements, and applicable military publications. Such as Army Regulation 27-10 inclines to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, or the Military Manual for Courts-Martial are more appropriate to cite when dealing with "rights" guaranteed to military personnel.
Indeed, it can be argued that the ICC has due process safeguards that are broadly comparable to those of the U.S. Constitution (if not technically identical with them). In addition, the US has adopted forms of war crimes and crimes against humanity within its military courts. (Pub. L. 18 USC § 2441 (b)). The military courts have jurisdiction over all military personnel abroad and any accompanying civilians. Further the US has adopted crimes of genocide within its domestic system. (Pub. L. 18 USC § 1091(d)) and conscription of child soldiers (Pub. L. 110-340).
Claimed incompatibility with the U.S. Constitution
The U.S. conservative group the Heritage Foundation claims that "United States participation in the ICC treaty regime would also be unconstitutional because it would allow the trial of American citizens for crimes committed on American soil, which are otherwise entirely within the judicial power of the United States. The Supreme Court has long held that only the courts of the United States, as established under the Constitution, can try such offenses."[17] This statement refers to several issues. The first is the trial of American citizens by the ICC and implies that the Court does not have the power to try Americans for crimes committed on U.S. territory. The second refers to due-process issues.
RenewAmerica claim that ratification by the United States of the Rome Statute would require a constitutional amendment, as was the case in other countries such as Ireland. According to RenewAmerica, "Because the ICC is inconsistent with fundamental constitutional protections, the federal government is without authority to ratify the treaty absent a constitutional amendment."[18]
Critics argue that because the US Constitution permits the creation of only one Supreme Court that participation with the International Criminal Court violates the US Constitution. However, the Court is not a creation of the US; instead, it functions internationally. Further, the US has participated in various international courts including the International Military Tribunals for the Far East, the Nuremberg Tribunal, and the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.[19]
As pointed out in the Congressional Research Service's Report for Congress, the ICC is not "an instrumentality of the U.S."[20]. Therefore, it does not threaten to supplant the Constitutional authority of the US Supreme Court.
Efforts to shield Americans from ICC jurisdiction
In 2002 the United States began to undertake measures to shield U.S. nationals from prosecution by the ICC.
American Service Members Protection Act
In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including prohibitions on the United States providing military aid to countries which had ratified the treaty establishing the court; however, there were a number of exceptions to this, including NATO members, major non-NATO allies, and countries which entered into an agreement with the United States not to hand over U.S. nationals to the Court (see Article 98 agreements below). ASPA also excluded any military aid that the U.S. President certified to be in the U.S. national interest. Limits on military assistance have been repealed, as outlined below.
In addition, ASPA contained provisions prohibiting U.S. co-operation with the Court, and permitting the President to authorize military force to free any U.S. military personnel held by the court,[21] leading opponents to dub it "The Hague Invasion Act." The act was later modified to permit U.S. cooperation with the ICC when dealing with U.S. enemies.
On October 2, 2006 President Bush issued waivers of these same IMET prohibitions with respect to 21 nations. Foreign Military Funds (FMF) restricted under ASPA were not affected by the 2006 waivers or the ASPA amendment. On October 17, 2006 President Bush signed into law an amendment to ASPA as part of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 removing International Military Education and Training (IMET) restrictions for all nations. On November 22, 2006 President George W. Bush issued ASPA waivers with respect to the Comoros and Saint Kitts and Nevis, followed by a similar waiver with respect to Montenegro on August 31, 2007.
On January 28, 2008 President Bush signed into law an amendment to the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA) to eliminate restrictions on Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to nations unwilling to enter into Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) shielding US nationals from the jurisdiction of the ICC. Section 1212 of HR 4986 effectively gutted from ASPA all of the provisions which threaten nations with the loss of military assistance of any kind for refusing a BIA.
Criticism of ASPA
The effects of the American Service Members Protection Act (ASPA) were severely criticized by the Defense Department. While speaking before the United States Army Committee on House Armed Services regarding the FY 2006 Budget, US Army General Bantz J. Craddock, Commander of the US Southern Command, made strong statements[22] on the impact of ASPA on military operations and cooperation in Latin America. He explains that ASPA is creating a void of contact that is being filled by other extra-hemispheric actors, including China. Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby made similar statements[23] during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In addition, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Myers[24] testified at the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on April 27, 2005 that ASPA has reduced foreign troop training opportunities and hurt the government's ability to fight terrorism abroad as an "unintended consequence."
and so it goes,
GORD.
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