Since the ICC keeps turning up in various threads, now is a good time to take a look again at all of the things that are wrong with the ICC.
The ICC is not limited merely to prosecuting genocide or slaughter of prisoners, despite what its proponents say, it can actually prosecute anything its judges can call a war crime with a straight face, so pretty much any military activity can be a crime according to the ICC. Don’t believe me? Read the absurdly broad (8 2 b xxi) “Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment”. While defenders of the ICC would try to assure us that this only means the sort of gross assaults on a person that we’d be truly horrified by, this could easily cover forcing someone to go about in a bright orange jumpsuit while wearing chains - a somewhat common method for transporting prisoners. Or the normal propaganda leaflets telling the enemy that their cause is hopeless and that they are horribly outclassed. Or, really, just about any negative statement about a country or group fits the definition of a ‘war crime’ under the Rome Treaty.
Another commonly repeated but untrue statement is that someone cleared by the US justice system would not risk prosecution by the ICC. In fact, whether someone can be tried after being cleared by a US court is entirely up to the whim of the judges, there is nothing preventing them from simply declaring that the US proceedings were not good enough. According to Article 17 sec 2 c, the judges merely have to decide that “The proceedings were not or are not being conducted independently or impartially, and they were or are being conducted in a manner which, in the circumstances, is inconsistent with an intent to bring the person concerned to justice.” Since there’s no independent definition of how to determine impartiality or independence, it is only a matter of whether the judges can call the US proceedings not impartial with a straight face. Consider the comments on the handling of the US plane/Itlian Ski lift accident, or the fact that US “allies” consider the US justice system so bad that they will not extradite terrorists to the US.
But, of course, the defenders of the ICC will fall back on the impartiality of the ICC judges. Judges who are elected in the same manner as general assembly comittees. You know, the process that results in the US not being allowed on the human rights council while Syria and Lybia stay on, or Quadafi almost heading it, or good 'ol Saddam Hussein heading up the disarmament group? Using a ‘general assembly’ one-country-one-vote also strikes me as rather unreasonable, and that seems to be borne out by the fact that (at least last time I checked) the main holdouts against the court were the US, Russia, China, and India - 4 countries who’d have virtually no say in appointing judges (Luxembourg-Lichtenstein-Andorra-Vatican City would have the same voting power) yet account for over a third of the world’s population.
These, plus further problems such as the lack of a meaningful appeals process (appeal is only allowed right back to ICC judges), lack of due process considerations (trial by jury, inadmissable evidence, and double jeopordy are all missing), and more make the ICC theoretically unsuitable as the basis of a world court system. And I base that comment about ‘world court system’ on the UN FAQ on the ICC, which discussed the potential for the ICC to expand to include drug crimes in the future. There are also ‘interesting’ practical considerations, like who will actually bring these criminals before the ICC? It can’t be the authorities of the country they’re in, since if the authorities are interested in bringing a war criminal to justice, the ICC shouldn’t have jurisdiction in the first place.
Lack of trial by jury is probably a necessity if you are trying war criminals with thousands of armed loyalists at their disposal.
As far as the other accusations you made in your last paragraph, most are patently false.
Article 69 deals with inadmissibility of evidence
Article 20 deals with double jeopardy
Also, why are people so angry that there is a world court? there has been a world court for decades, the International Court of Justice which has existed since 1946.
Also, before anyone brings up the whole ‘americans in foreign prisons’ argument, you should know there are hundreds, if not thousands of americans in prisons all over the world. I will try to dig up the stat on how many americans are in prison all over the world. So the argument that ‘this would put americans in a foreign prison’ is pretty weak, as this foreign prison has a multitude of safeguards for a defendents rights.
The ICC will probably be abused now and again. I fail to see why that means we should abandon it. There will be war crime tribunals with or without an ICC, an ICC will just centralize the process and make is less expensive than ad hoc war crime tribunals. Its like saying lynch mobs are ok but a courthouse is evil. Same difference, but one is more centralized, with more rights for the accused.
I have no idea how they will capture criminals. I guess they’d need security council approval beforehand to do that.
Hopefully if the ICC becomes as corrupt as the Human rights commission countries will abandon it. There should be safeguards & backdoors to prevent the court from being corrupted.
Heres a crapload of other info i don’t have time to type out
Nearly all the laws that the ICC will use are already in existence and have been for some time (a great deal of them were the laws used at the Nuremburg trial).
Also Caculus of Logic, I know the UN human rights commision has had problems, but it’s not nearly as corrupt as you make out.
Those Americans are imprisoned because they broke the laws of those foreign nations. If you rape a woman in Okinawa you can expect to be imprisoned in the Japanese penal system regardless of your nationality. You won’t find many Americans protesting unless rights are violated or the penal system is particularly brutal.
American critics of the ICC don’t like military personel being under foreign jurisdiction while they’re engaged in miliatary actions. They also don’t like the ICC being able to try someone clearned by a United States Court Martial for accused war crimes.
I’m really, really pleased that my government and the armed forces it commands can now be held accountable for their actions. Too many things have happened in the past where the British Army hasn’t been held accountable for too long. Bloody Sunday springs to mind. Now, at least, we’re theoretically on board with this (even if we’re doing our darndest to back up Bush in undermining it).
Why would anybody be against accountabilty for their armed forces? You know Cambodia? That was bad, that was. You know Rhodesia? That was fucked up. So, yes, if we have a way of saying to people “don’t do that again or you’ll go to prison,” I, frankly, am all for it.
And, as people have pointed out, the ICC is designed around the principles already espoused in the Geneva Convention and other international agreements that the USA and the UK are already members of, which are already ratified and present in their own legislation. If they can be held accountable under the language of the Rome Statute, they can be held accountable under laws already present in their own countries ANYWAY. For this reason, it seems mighty suspicious to me to go out of your way to avoid accountability. It’s like an admission that you fully intend to break the law, and you’re pissed off you can’t circumvent the authorities any more.
Remember: it’s a court. It decides guilt or innocence based on the evidence. I won’t say “if you’re innocent you have nothing to fear,” because that’s patently not true, but you certainly have less to fear than a jumped up kangaroo court like the ones GWB operated in Afghanistan.
What relevance does that fact have to my objection to the ICC? A treaty like the Geneva convention doesn’t function like a court of law. It’s an agreement between countries with the penalty for violation being abrogation of the treaty, not a statutory law under which a person can be convicted (which the provisions of the Rome Treaty effectivetively are).
BRinging up someone with ‘thousands of armed loyalists’ is irrelevant, I’m much more concerned with ‘war criminals’ like, oh, and US solider that an ‘ally’ like France decides to go after for fun. An argument for why trial by jury is inappropriate would be interesting, though, so please provide one. Also, a description of how someone with thousands of armed loyalists at their disposal would be brought before the court would provide for more interesting reading.
Ahh, the typical ICC defense of calling anyone who doesn’t like the kangaroo court a liar. Let’s take a look at my ‘patently false’ assertions, shall we?
So, the rule on admissability of evidence is that evidence obtained with war crimes or in violation of fundamental human rights is fine as long as the court thinks it’s reliable and doesn’t think it will damage the integrity of the proceedings. In other words, the judges can admit any evidince they wish regardless of how it was obtained. So, my quick summary was quite correct as to the actual fact of admissability of evidence; evidence obtained by violation of human rights or war crimes is only inadmissable if the judges either don’t believe it (in which case the evidence is irrelevant anyway) or if they think it would make them look bad to accept it. In practical terms, any evidence is admissible regardless of what human rights were violated to obtain it.
As I said in my first post, the only protection against double jeopardy is that whether the judges can call the US proceedings ‘not impartial’ with a straight face. As I said before, consider the comments on the handling of the US plane/Itlian Ski lift accident, or the fact that US “allies” consider the US justice system so bad that they will not extradite terrorists to the US before you make an argument.
The double jeopardy and admissability of evidence provisions (or lack thereof) are significant because the ICC, if allowed to fester and grow, could become a much wider reaching world court. If it does so with the current lack of protections, it would be a real blow to freedom, and I’ve seen talk (in a FAQ that used to be on the main UN page) of expanding it to everyone’s favorite blow to freedom, the War on Some Drugs.
No one made the argument “this would put Americans in a foreign prison”; when you debate by coming up with weak arguments and shooting them down, it’s called strawman argumentation. ‘Americans in foreign prisons’ at the current time is irrelevant to ‘Americans in prison from the ICC’ anyway, since those currently in prison are Americans who chose to go to a country and then ran afoul of the law in that country, not soliders called before a Kanagaroo court for other people’s political fun.
The ICC is wide open to abuse, and if you don’t see why a court that has no means to prosecute the crimes it’s supposedly set up to handle and a lot of ways to prefrom show trials against US soliders should be opposed by the US, well, I’m not sure what would convince you.
Cite, please - I’m not aware of any supporting evidence for the prospect of the ICC making war crimes trials less expensive. It’s going to be hard to make much of an expense argument since bringing an actual war criminal before the ICC would take a war, which is not exactly cheap and probably dwarfs the court costs.
No, I’m saying that the ICC is like dressing up your lynch mob in robes and trying to claim that they’re a legitimate court. And I’d like some support for the ‘more rights for the accused’, too, since the court provides far fewer rights for the accused than an American court. (For example, evidence obtained by torture, by tapping client-lawyer communications, or by search not predicated on probable cause could be admitted to the ICC but not to a US court.)
You can’t have it both ways; opposition to the ICC is allegedly bad because the ICC will finally provide a means to bring war criminals to justice. Yet as currently constituted, there is no means for the ICC to actually force a real war criminal to come before it. It certainly looks to me like it can only effectively prosecute people from a country that will honor a treaty, like the US, and not real ‘war criminals with thousands of armed followers’.
The lack of safeguards is at the core of my argument, if you’re saying that the ICC lacks sufficient safeguards against becoming as corrupt as other organizations using the same voting process, then you’re agreeing with me.
That’s a crapload of incorrect and/or misleading information, and if you don’t have time to type it I don’t have time to refute each piece of it individually. I’ll just pick one section of it:
While they addressed some point about the specific undefined crime of ‘aggression’, they didn’t adress the more general point of just how vague the definitions of crimes are. Look at the second paragraph in my original post, and see that this answer addresses nothing about the absurdly broad 8 2 b xxi or any of the other vague laws. Since they said that “The definitions of crimes are vague” was a myth, but didn’t address the vagueness of the crimes in general, their answer is deceptive. And it certainly doesn’t answer any of my points.
OK, read my original post again and get back to me. I’ve already pointed out that the ICC is not limited to incidents Cambodia and Rhodesia. I’ve also pointed out that the court has no way to say “don’t do that again or you’ll go to prison”. Rhodesia is interesting to bring up, since the UN did nothing to stop the slaughter in Rhosdesia. How would the ICC arrest someone for the Rhodesian genocide considering that the SC would not approve use of force to stop the genocide in the first place?
And, as I’ve pointed out, it takes some things that are good in principle and sets them down into a statutory law that’s so vague it allowes the court to prosecute for virtually anything it feels like.
Nope, not true, please cite the US law which would make transporting a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit ciminal or explain how making a prisoner wear an orange jumpsuit is not either humilitating or degrading.
“Guilt or innocence” of absurdly broadly defined crimes, as I’ve already pointed out. And ‘the evidence’ includes evidence obtained through the comission of war crimes and through human rights violations. Torture is A-OK in the ICC!
Because a jury trial would be a bad idea on 3 counts
different countries have different societies, and different views on what is acceptable.
Its inconvenient to send peopl 1/2 way across the world for trails. Its inconvenient to do it across town.
(the more important reason). If the ICC is designed to try powerful military or political leaders, a bunch of defenseless brick layer from Mexico or school teacher from Lithuania would be easy to intimidate.
Look at what just happened to the prime minister of serbia. He was assassinated by a pro-Milosevic militant faction. If a prime minister can be intimidated & assassinated, then a defenseless blue collar worker would be easy to intimidate.
I can’t argue against the ICC being open to abuse. However, it is still designed to go after serious criminals, not prosecute petty grudges. Hopefully it will do its duty, if it completely fails hopefully the world will abandon it. I fail to see how ICC judges, who have years of criminal justice experience in the own countries, will automatically turn into grindingly petty people willing to jeopardize their entire careers to go after the USA. Do you see any supreme court justices willing to destroy their career to carry out a petty grudge?
Since it hasn’t even tried anything yet, how can you say it is a kangaroo court?
I’m still almost certain that is designed to go after seriously corrupted court systems. If it becomes corrupted and starts to view cases as improperly investigated based solely on how much the judges hate a country, then hopefully countries will recognize this and stop listening to it.
What is your evidence that an american investigation would be taken unseriously?
Hopefully it never becomes involved in the drug trade. If it does, it will still be better than just ignoring serious war crimes.
Ironic that you would use the phrase ‘straw man argument’ while throwing out unproven paranoid assumptions. The ICC hasn’t even tried anyone/thing, how can it already be a Kangaroo court? Is Milosevic being tried in a kangaroo court? is the Internatioanl Court of Justice a Kangaroo court? are the war crime tribunals kangaroo courts.
Show me how its more open to abuse than any other court system. Show me how its more open to abuse than the ICJ. in the ICJ, 15 judges are elected to 9 year terms by the Security Council & general assembly.
In order to elect a judge in the ICC, your country must be a member of the Assembly of States Parties. in order to be a part of the ASP, your country must ratify the Roman Statute. Last time i checked, most of the countries we hate and who hate us havn’t done this.
Most of those countries are european, african or south americans. There are no middle eastern countries other than Jordan. Maybe the south americans might have lingering hatred for what they percieve as imperialism during the 20th century. If so, then hopefully the USA will refuse to cooperate with the ICC. i have no problems whatsoever with the USA not cooperating with the ICC, as the ICC was designed to go after serious war crimes. I don’t think the USA does anything that could legitimately be called a serious war crime.
Reference has been made to “tribunal fatigue”. The delays inherent in setting up an ad hoc tribunal can have several consequences: crucial evidence can deteriorate or be destroyed; perpetrators can escape or disappear; and witnesses can relocate or be intimidated. Investigation becomes increasingly expensive, and the tremendous expense of ad hoc tribunals may soften the political will required to mandate them.
Ad hoc tribunals are subject to limits of time or place. In the last year, thousands of refugees from the ethnic conflict in Rwanda have been murdered, but the mandate of that Tribunal is limited to events that occured in 1994. Crimes committed since that time are not covered.
The ICC has been created in part because the ad-hoc tribunals, like those for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, are extremely expensive and have experienced numerous logistical problems. It takes enormous amounts of time and money to establish ad-hoc tribunals, and the delay in their creation means that evidence gets destroyed and those responsible remain at large. Moreover, the creation of a permanent court will have a deterrent effect on future war criminals. With the ICC in existence it is extremely unlikely that the Security Council will authorize the creation of any more ad-hoc tribunals.
What are you basing that on. Where in the Roman Statute does it say those thing? i don’t remember that (i didn’t read the Statute too thoroughly).
Article 69.7.b
Evidence obtained by means of a violation of this Statute or internationally recognized human rights shall not be admissible if
The admission of the evidence would be antithetical to and would seriously damage the integrity of the proceedings.
The USA isn’t a party to the ICC, our government has signed many non-extradition treaties with other countries over the ICC. Not only that, but the government has withdrawn its signature from the Roman Statute.
Well, prove that the ICC is any more corrupted than the ICJ.
“Hopefully it will do its duty?” No, sorry, I can’t agree with the idea to set up a court and give it the power to throw people in prison for incredibly minor incidents, then just think good thoughts and hope it doesn’t do bad stuff. If the court is broken then it should be fixed before anyone is asked to agree to it. If you’re saying that you agree that the court is not structurally sound, then you’re agreeing with me and it doesn’t matter what the designers hoped it would do, it’s a bad idea. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
On what basis do you assert that they’re jeopardizing their careers? I hardly think a judge from an anti-American country like France is going to hinder his career by striking a blow against those big bad Americans. Much less a judge from some third world hellhole.
Because it’s a sham pretending to be a valid court in which defendants have effectively no rights and with judges elected by the same absurd process that leads to Kadafi on the Human Rights Council. From Black’s Law dictionary: “Kangaroo Court: Term descriptive of of a sham legal procceding in which a person’s rights are totally disregarded and in which the result is a forgone conclusion because of the bias of the court or other tribunal”.
Again with this hope sillyness. The court is flawed, hoping that the flaws never manifest is just nuts. If I can legally walk over to your house and shoot you because I’m in the mood for it, that law is a bad even though you hope that I wouldn’t do so and even though I’m not exactly likely to do so.
Where is there anything in the ICC other than the whim of the judges preventing it?
Your evidence that it will be better than, or even different from ignoring serious war crimes is…?
How is that ironic? Even if I was throwing out unproven paranoid assumptions, ‘unproven paranoid assumptions’ don’t have anything to do with a ‘straw man argument’. And what, exactly are my unproven paranoid assumptions - direct quotes of the text of the Rome Treaty?
What definition of kangaroo court are you using?
The judges are elected by the same process that put Kadafi on the HRC and kicked the US off. Any questions?
What relevance does that have? I’m not going to research the ICJ for your weird tangent, if the ICC is broken then it’s broken regardless of how the ICJ works.
ITYM “Haven’t yet.”
OK, so I’ll buy that the ICC is cheaper than ad hoc proceedings. That still doesn’t change that the ICC is fundamentally flawed, however…
You quoted what I’m basing it on, the judges can allow evidence acquired from torture as long as they don’t think it will seriously damage the integrity of the proceedings.
I’m aware of that; there’s an assumed ‘if the US were to ratify the Rome Treaty as ICC supporters assert that we shoud’ in there which I thought was obvious enough in context.