The South African Communist Party (SACP), in an April statement, asserted that the timing of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant issued against Russian President Vladimir Putin, issued just before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia in March, indicated a political motivation and historical inconsistency. “Unfortunately, imperialist powers continue to manipulate this multilateral institution and use it for[Read More…]

Establishment of the International Criminal Court In 1998, in Rome, representatives of 120 countries signed a statute establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC), with jurisdiction over the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. Four years were to pass before the necessary ratifications were gathered, but by Thursday, April 11, 2002, 66 nations had[Read More…]

The issue of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine highlights the decades-long reluctance of today’s major military powers to support the International Criminal Court. In 1998, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established by an international treaty, the Rome Statute.  Coming into force in 2002 and with 123 nations now parties to it, the treaty provides that the ICC, headquartered[Read More…]

International tribunals tend to be praised, in principle, by those they avoid investigating.  Once interest shifts to those parties, such bodies become the subject of accusations: bias, politicisation, crude arbitrariness.  The United States, whose legal and political personnel have expended vast resources on the machinery of international courts and jurisprudence, remains cold to the International Criminal Court.  The sceptics have[Read More…]

On 2 September, 2020, the US sanctioned two officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigating into alleged war crimes by US forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan since 2003.The officials are ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and the ICC’s head of Jurisdiction, Complementary, and Cooperation Division, Phakiso Mochochok (sanctioned for having materially assisted Prosecutor Bensouda). Announcing this decision,[Read More…]

The decision by the Trump administration to sanction members of the International Criminal Court defies logic, in so far as there is any logic to sanctions.  As a policy tool, such tools are supposedly designed to target specific members of a regime that has fallen into bad ways.  In practice, they act as instruments of collective punishment.  When used economically,[Read More…]

            For nearly a half a century — almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence — the General Assembly has recognized the need to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide.  Many thought that the horrors of the Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations,[Read More…]

At last another tyrant is going to face trial at The International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of carrying out genocide, mass murder and crimes against humanity upon a large ethnic group. Omar Al-Bashir, ex-dictator of Sudan who was ousted by a popular uprising in 2019 will be extradited to the Hague, the headquarter of the ICC. It has recently[Read More…]

  Well, not exactly like that, but in a way, yes. Now, finally, ‘the gloves are off’. The U.S. is openly threatening the historically timid ICC (International Criminal Court) and its judges. And unexpectedly, the ICC is hitting back. It refuses to shut up, to kneel, and to beg for mercy. Suddenly, even the Western mass media outlets cannot conceal[Read More…]