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War crimes

The Belmarsh Tribunal

October 5, 2020 Srećko Horvat, Open Democracy. , , ,
On November 13, 1966 – at the height of the resistance war in Vietnam – Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre convened a people's tribunal to hold the US government accountable for its escalating war crimes. “The tribunal has no clear historical precedent”, Russell said. It represented no state power; it had no capacity to sentence the accused. “I believe that these apparent limitations are, in fact, virtues. We are free to conduct a solemn and historic investigation”, said Russell, “presented to the conscience of mankind.”

Canada Has A War Crimes Problem

September 30, 2020 Matthew Behrens, Rabble.ca. , , ,
Two new reports on Canadian weapons exports reveal that Canadian-based corporate entities (and, by extension, government agencies that support and encourage their exports) are complicit in the commission of war crimes in Yemen, Turkey, Libya, Syria and Iraq. These findings build on previously raised concerns that the Canadian military was complicit in war crimes during the occupation of Afghanistan (including when current Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan operated there as a soldier).  Earlier this month, the United Nations criticized Canada, among other nations, for continuing to export weapons to all parties that fuel the commission of war crimes in Yemen. 

UK Moving Bill To Decriminalize War Crimes

September 24, 2020 Dan Sabbagh and Heather Stewart, The Guardian. , , ,
Labour has sacked three junior shadow ministers who joined with Jeremy Corbyn and 14 other Socialist Campaign group MPs in breaking the party’s whip by voting against the second reading of a controversial armed forces bill. Sources close to the party’s leadership said that the three MPs were warned in advance that they could not remain in their posts as parliamentary private secretaries if they voted against the bill. Nadia Whittome, Beth Winter and Olivia Blake defied the whip, which called on Labour MPs to abstain on the overseas operations bill. The legislation aims to introduce a presumption against prosecution for British soldiers serving abroad.

EU And France Call On US To Reverse ‘Unacceptable’ Sanctions Against ICC’s War Crimes Investigators

September 5, 2020 RT. , , ,
US sanctions against two International Criminal Court officials are “unacceptable and unprecedented” and should be reversed, said the EU’s top diplomat, while the French foreign minister called them “a grave attack” on the court. The sanctions are “unacceptable and unprecedented measures that attempt to obstruct the court's investigations and judicial proceedings,” EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell said in a statement on Thursday. The US should “reconsider its position and reverse the measures it has taken,” Borrell added. His comments came shortly after French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian condemned the sanctions as “a grave attack against the court,” saying it put into question “multilateralism and the independence of the judiciary.” 

US Punishes ICC For Investigating Potential War Crimes

September 3, 2020 Susan M. Akram, The Conversation. , , , ,
The Trump administration has sought to weaken or abandon various international agencies since 2016. Now it’s taking aim at the International Criminal Court, a global tribunal that investigates and prosecutes war crimes, torture and genocide. Claiming the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes by U.S. forces in Afghanistan poses a national security threat, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on June 11 effectively criminalizing anyone who works at the ICC. Its lawyers, judges, human rights researchers and staff could now have their U.S. bank accounts frozen, U.S. visas revoked and travel to the U.S. denied.

Israel’s Crimes Must Be Met With Arms Embargo

August 27, 2020 By Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada. , , , , ,
Israel’s bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip must be met with an “urgent and comprehensive military embargo,” the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee stated on Sunday. Israel has bombed Gaza every night for the past 12 days in response, or so it claims, to incendiary balloons flown from the territory. Those balloons have caused fires on agricultural land in southern Israel. Two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million are refugees, some of them from the lands just on the other side of the Gaza boundary fence. Israel denies them their right to return, enshrined in international law, while encouraging Jews worldwide to emigrate to Israel. Gaza has been under a devastating blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt for the past 13 years.

Israel Cuts Fuel, Gaza Goes Dark

August 22, 2020 By Tamara Nassar, Electronic Intifada. , , ,
The Gaza Strip’s only power plant shut down on Tuesday after Israel stopped the transfer of fuel to the territory. The halting of fuel transfers is among a series of collective punishment measures Israel has imposed on Gaza. Israel has claimed the measures are a response to incendiary balloons released from Gaza. The launching of such balloons by some Palestinians is, in reality, a symbolic effort to draw attention to the deteriorating situation in Gaza, long subject to an Israeli siege. Although incendiary balloons caused several fires in Israel, “no injuries or damage have been reported,” according to The Jerusalem Post. Israel has also bombed Gaza on an almost a daily basis over the past week.

Atomic Bombings At 75: The Illegality Of Nuclear Weapons

August 5, 2020 By Francis Boyle, Consortium News. , , ,
The mere possession of nuclear weapons violates the Nuremberg Principles (decreed a day before Nagasaki) and other international laws. The human race stands on the verge of nuclear self-extinction as a species, and with it will die most, if not all, forms of intelligent life on the planet earth. Any attempt to dispel the ideology of nuclearism and its attendant myth propounding the legality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must directly come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8, 1945 [promulgated two days after Hiroshima and a day before Nagasaki], and violated several basic provisions of the Regulations annexed to Hague Convention No. 4 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), the rules of customary international law set forth in the Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923), and the United States War Department Field Manual 27-10, Rules of Land Warfare (1940).

Israel’s Secret List Of Officials Who May Stand Trial At International Court

July 20, 2020 Noa Landau, Haaretz. , , ,
Israel is drawing up a secret list of military and intelligence officials who might be subject to arrest abroad if the International Criminal Court in the Hague opens an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories. Haaretz has learned that this list now includes between 200 and 300 officials, some of whom have not been informed. The great secrecy surrounding the issue stems from a fear that the mere disclosure of the list’s existence could endanger the people on it. The assessment is that the court is likely to view a list of names as an official Israeli admission of these officials’ involvement in the incidents under investigation. The ICC is expected to rule shortly on whether to approve the request by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate Israel and Hamas over suspicions of war crimes in the territories beginning in 2014, the year of Operation Protective Edge.

Iranian Arrest Warrant For Trump Shows How Disreputable US Presidency Has Become

June 30, 2020 By Finian Cunningham, RT. , , ,
The arrest warrant issued by Iran for the murder of General Qassem Soleimani in January shows how disreputable the office of the US presidency has become. Trump has openly bragged about ordering the assassination of the widely revered Iranian commander. There was a time when American presidents would at least use discretion in liquidating foreign enemies. Not Trump. He reveled in the murder. For the more liberal apologists of America’s Murder Inc., Trump’s kind of bravado is embarrassing. The president is just not supposed to divulge the bloody reality of Washington’s lawlessness. Interpol, which serves as an international agency linking national police forces, told RIA Novosti if it receives a request to arrest Trump, its own rules will not allow it to act on it arguing that the Iranian move is illegitimate because it is “politically motivated”

Ahmed Erekat Was Executed With The Blessing Of Abbas And The Oslo People

June 30, 2020 By Dr. Amira Abo el-Fetouh, Middle East Today , , ,
Ahmed Erekat was not the first Palestinian to be killed by the Israeli occupation forces in cold blood, nor will he be the last to be killed “because he tried to attack” them. The young man was shot dead as he helped his sister with her wedding preparations. Instead of the bride rejoicing, the Zionists turned her wedding into a funeral for the entire Erekat family, and all Palestinians. Heinous crimes like this are committed on a regular basis, and the Israelis and their supporters try to justify them on every occasion. They tell their pre-packaged “self-defense” claims to the world; defend their presence on occupied land and claim to be fighting against anti-Semitic terrorists who deny the Jewish people a homeland in Israel. They kill and displace the indigenous people and then justify their despicable criminal acts without batting an eyelid. Amazingly, the world not only believes them but also sympathizes with them, as if they are the victims instead of the people they are killing and displacing. It is a cowardly world that sees with only one eye; a world without a conscience that supports the criminals at the expense of the victims.

Fortress On A Hill: Rebecca Gordon And American Nuremberg

May 9, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Fortress on a Hill. , , ,
Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular and author of American Nuremberg: The Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post 9/11 War Crimes, stop by the podcast to discuss torture and moral injury in the post 9/11 world, her experiences in Nicaragua and South Africa, how past presidents paved the way for Donald Trump, and over-classication in the intelligence community. Rebecca Gordon received her B.A. from Reed College and her M.Div. and Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from Graduate Theological Union. She teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco and for the university’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good. Previous publications include Letters From Nicaragua, Cruel and Usual: How Welfare “Reform” Punishes Poor People, and Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States.

US And Israel Team Up To Thwart War Crimes Probes

April 19, 2020 Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada. , , ,
The US secretary of state’s threats to sanction two employees working for the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and their families last month may have been the opening salvoes of a new US-Israel war against the justice body in The Hague. Both states currently face the embarrassing specter of war crimes investigations by the court – an unprecedented challenge to their impunity. In response, they aim to disempower the court by preventing it from exercising jurisdiction in countries that are not state parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty on which the court was founded. Should the US and Israel succeed, it would be a significant blow to the court’s independent mandate and purpose as a court of last resort for the victims of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

Team Trump Failed To Bully ICC Into Dropping War Crimes Probe

March 15, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , ,
fter the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found a reasonable basis to believe that U.S. military and CIA leaders committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, Team Trump threatened to ban ICC judges and prosecutors from the U.S. and warned it would impose economic sanctions on the Court if it launched an investigation. Apparently succumbing to the U.S. threats, in April 2019, the ICC’s Pretrial Chamber refused to authorize the investigation that prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had requested. But in an unprecedented decision, the Appeals Chamber unanimously overruled the Pretrial Chamber on March 5, 2020, and ordered a formal investigation of U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials for war crimes, including torture, committed in the “war on terror.”

Palestinians Decry ICC Prosecutor’s Delay Of Israeli War Crimes Investigation

January 4, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout.org , , ,
In a significant development for Israeli accountability, Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), seeks to launch an investigation into war crimes committed in Palestine. But she has established an unnecessary and politically suspect condition to slow down the process. Following a five-year preliminary examination, Bensouda found a reasonable basis to mount an investigation of “the situation in Palestine.”
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