The US has taken the decision to abandon their effort to extend the 2 year immunity deal offered to US troops active abroad. (From here). To general agreement…
Now, is this a step towards tacitly acknowledging the legitimacy of the ICC? Will failure to renew this agreement affect the deployment of US troops on UN sanctioned peace-keeping missions? Should it?
Or is it that the strength of separately negotiated bi-lateral agreements with individual nations offer a more effective immunity to their troops than would negotiating an extension of their initial deal?
Is this a real threat to future legitimate UN peacekeeping missions, or mere bluster from the US in light of losing their UNSC endorsed immunity?
Also: rather than run the “risk of ICC review when…contributing to UN…operations”, should the US just not endeavour to change their training and operating procedures to ensure that their future actions *cannot * ever be construed as war crimes, even ambiguously, by those with an axe to grind?
When they first requested immunity for US troops part of the rhetoric given was that US troops would obviously never commit war crimes, and the court would only be used for time waisting spurious claims made against US troops. I think after Iraq prison details came out this sort of rhetoric became completely hypocritical.
In the same way anyone with a ‘boner’ for any other countries troops working for UN can have them charged with war crimes. :rolleyes back to you.
I don’t see how **Merijeek[/B[ gets to mention Kerry in this, the first time US requested and got immunity for its troops was about 5 years ago, and that was when the argument that US troops couldn’t possibly be conceived of having acted criminally in war was stated (or was given as the reason by UK press at the time).
Not really. Anyone can make a criminal complaint to the court’s prosecutors (as everyone can make a criminal complaint, however unfounded, to your local prosecutor). I am sure some posturing fools will make such complaints, and that this will be hyped by the US right (while the court’s rejecting the complaints some time later won’t be considered news).
Then the court will need to determine whenther the formal criteria are met (the alleged crime was a war crime, its scene was in a country that is a party to the ICC treaty or it was commited by forces of a party to the ICC treaty), and that no good-faith effort at prosecution was made by the respective country.
These criteria are so restrictive that it’s hardly likely that a case against an US soldier can get through in the foreseeable future.
Of course there is the theoretical possibility that the court’s judges might succumb to collective stark raving madness. That’s also a theoretical possibily with all other courts in democratic countries (not taking into account non-independent ‘courts’ in dictatorships), but I have not heard yet of it having been the case anywhere. In that case the parties to the ICC treaty would obviously have no choice but to disavov the court, rendering it powerless and without funds.
Just like how anybody with a boner against you personally can accuse you of any other crime in the book. Why is this any different? Do you have reason to believe that a false war crime has a higher chance of a false conviction than other crimes? I’m genuinely asking, I do not know if there is or is not.
It looks to me like the first immunity was conceded because the reputation of the US military was that its personnel were under the direction of respectable people who followed the established rules. The present leadership has Department of Justice lawyers searching for ways to avoid following the intent of the established rules by finding quibbling interpretations that can be used as loopholes.
Was that use of whooshing irony?