Rome Statute

Apparently, the US envoy to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, he asked NATO countries for help in disassembling the ICC.

He said people should leave the founding agreement that underpins the court, the Rome Statute, and that was according to three NATO diplomats that Victor spoke to.

And apparently, Whitaker ended by saying, "We will be watching closely who stands with America." So real fighting talk in Brussels.

Ominous, yeah.

They really don't have any enforcement power.

But generally speaking, if you're a signed country to that treaty, the Rome Treaty, then you could enforce it.

Israel and the United States of America are not signed to that Rome Treaty.

Okay, let's continue on here.

The United States has long endeavored to undermine the work of the International Criminal Court, the ICC.

Although it is not a party to the Rome Statute, the U.S. has consistently attacked the ICC.

In 2003, Congress passed and then President George W. Bush signed the American Service Members Protection Act, known as the Hague Invasion Act.

It says that if a national of the United States or its ally, which includes Israel, is detained by the ICC in the Hague, Netherlands, the U.S. military can use armed force to extricate them.

The Bush administration effectively blackmailed 100 countries that were parties to the Rome Statute by forcing them to sign bilateral immunity agreements in which they promised not to turn over U.S. persons to the ICC or the United States would withhold foreign aid from them.

In November of 2024, after an investigation lasting more than three years, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Galant.

They stand charged with war crimes or of starvation as a form of warfare and international attacks on civilians and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.

and it authorized sanctions against ICC judges and senior prosecutors who participated in investigations into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan and Palestine.

The prosecution's charging document initially identified 49 incidents as examples supporting three charges, but the defense said it was notified on August 31 of eight additional incidents, bringing the proposed list to 57.

The defense, led by British lawyer Peter Haynes, argued that the prosecution's treatment of these incidents as illustrative and non-exhaustive violates Duterte's right to be informed in detail of the nature, cause and content of the charges against him under Article 67-1a of the Rome Statute.

It said the current structure leaves Duterte uncertain about what the prosecution must prove to obtain a conviction.

The three charges cover alleged murder as a crime against humanity in Davao City during Duterte's mayoral period from 2013 to around June 2016, alleged murder of high-value targets and locations across the Philippines during his presidential period from around July 2016 to July 2017, and alleged murder and attempted murder in barangay clearance operations across the Philippines from around July 2016 to September 2018.

The defense cited ICC jurisprudence recognizing the right of an accused to be informed in detail of the charges and the connection between that right and the ability to prepare a defense.

It asked the trial chamber to declare the current document containing the charges unfit and order the prosecution to refile it before the pretrial chamber.

The new charging document, the defense said, should define the charges as crimes under the Rome Statute and provide an exhaustive list of the underlying acts that constitute the entirety of the charges against Duterte.

The ICC referral is an attempt to put the evidence before an outside body.

And both Washington and Iran are outside the Rome Statute, so this filing does not magically produce handcuffs, but it puts Kuhestak and Sirich into the legal record while the strike campaign keeps running.

Al Jazeera writes...

In a quarterly report seen by news agencies on Tuesday, the United Nations nuclear watchdog labeled its lack of information about this nuclear material and access to facilities to verify it is a matter of proliferation concern.

I know the U.S. in some negotiations said, you know, we want really only the Nuremberg approach, only full-scale war should be illegal.

But the definition that we have today, which is found in the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute, it's found in GA Resolution 3314, it's found in the Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression for Ukraine that is in the process, we believe, of being established.

criminalizes a manifest charter violation.

It manifests by its character, gravity, and scale.

So kind of looking at the situation since the definition has been adopted, this is just a staggeringly large situation.

And I think if we were ever going to revitalize the legacy of Nuremberg, the time is now because otherwise you're like, we have this definition of the crime.

And the negotiations were open not just to ICC, Rome Statute, state parties, international criminal court state parties, but all states, because most of the negotiations occurred in Princeton, New Jersey.

And I was at these negotiations.