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Lincoln
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Here is an interesting article by mary Mostert I found that may shed some light on the topic of this thread. The date is August, 1999:
The Frantic, Unreported Effort by Clinton to Head Off Possible Indictment in the International Criminal Court
It was an obscure Associated Press report, brought to my attention by an e-mail from UN Wire, which tracks United Nations issues, headlined: "International Criminal Court: US Seeks Exception for Military Personnel." The preparatory commission for creating the ICC has been meeting for the past three weeks and, according to the AP report: "the issue that dominated three weeks of negotiations on the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal wasn't even on the agenda: What will it take for the United States to join the court?"
And, what is the Clinton Administration's sticking point? It seems that US ambassador for war crimes issues David Scheffer "is trying to find a legal solution that will enable Washington to sign the treaty." US officials have said the treaty would leave American citizens and military personnel "vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions." US Senate Foreign Relations Committee spokesperson Marc Thiessen warned that the Clinton administration wants an exception from investigation or prosecution by the court for personnel involved in official military actions. The United States wants "a clear recognition that states sometimes engage in very legitimate uses of military force to advance international peace and security," he explained (Associated Press, 14 Aug).
Clearly the unspoken concern here is that the International Criminal Court, which is designed to do on a international basis what the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been doing - targeting military and elected leaders of the former Yugoslavia for war crimes - could end up a indicting and trying Bill Clinton. Moves to indict him, Madeleine Albright and Tony Blair for their bombing of Yugoslavia and for allowing the KLA to implement its long held desire to seize control of Kosovo and evict or kill all non-Albanians, are gathering steam.
On 22 February 1993 the Security Council, on the insistence of and with the promised financial support of the Clinton Administration, decided to establish the 'International Tribunal for Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia Since 1991' (short: International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia). Its task is to try people "suspected of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991."
Based at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands, the tribunal "passes judgment, on behalf of the world community, on crimes which by their nature and scope are a concern to the entire world. The Tribunal will investigate a matter, if necessary in the absence of the accused, in a manner which is both independent and authoritative."
Now why, do you suppose, the United States is against a concept on an international basis that it was demanding implementation of a mere six years ago where Yugoslavia and Slobadan Milosevic were concerned?
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee spokesperson Marc Thiessen explained. He warned that the Clinton administration wants an exception from investigation or prosecution by the court for personnel involved in official military actions. The United States wants "a clear recognition that states sometimes engage in very legitimate uses of military force to advance international peace and security," he explained.
Thiessen called for "100% certitude that this court is not going to be turned into a vehicle for political attacks against the United States, [or] politicized prosecutions of American soldiers and officials." Thiessen said that without the exception, the United States will be pushed "into a policy of isolation, against its will." Without such protection for US troops, the United States would not risk humanitarian intervention in places where it has no vital national security interests, he said (Reuters/Kuala Lumpur Star, 15 Aug).
Richard Dicker, associate counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said such an exception would allow crimes against humanity to go unpunished. "It is a loophole the size of the Grand Canyon that any rogue state would drive right through," he said.
Thiessen admitted that carving out protection for the United States but not for war criminals like Slobodan Milosevic is going to be difficult. "I, quite frankly, don't know how they are going to thread the needle," he said.
Richard Dicker writes that "ill-conceived threats of active US opposition to the ICC have not chilled enthusiasm among the states supporting the court," but "unfortunately, Washington is still seeking to eviscerate the court behind closed doors." (Richard Dicker, Earth Times, 11 Aug).
What's the bottom line here under all the legalese? It's simple. Slobadan Milosevic was indicted by the ICC's prototype in late May at the insistence of the United States largely as a political ploy to box him into a corner that 77 days of bombing had failed to do. Milosevic was charged with the deaths of 340 persons and the "ethnic cleansing" of something like 40% of the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, many of whom were fleeing the bombs. On the other hand, the leaders of the NATO bombardment, led by William Jefferson Clinton, are being charged with the deaths of 2000 civilians in Kosovo and Serbia from the bombing, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo of all non-Albanians by NATO's ally, the KLA and the murder or disappearance of many hundreds of Serbs and Gypsies since NATO has been occupying Kosovo.
In other words, unless Clinton gets assurance that the ICC won't indict him for war crimes in Yugoslavia and Iraq, he's not about to agree to its formation, even though he said, in his September 22, 1997 speech before the UN "To punish those responsible for crimes against humanity and to promote justice so that peace endures, we must maintain our strong support for the U.N.'s war crime tribunals and truth commissions. And before the century ends, we should establish a permanent international court to prosecute the most serious violations of humanitarian law."
A complaint has been filed by a prestigious group of international lawyers charging William J. Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William S. Cohen, TonyBlair, Robin Cook, George Robertson, Javier Solana, Jamie Shea, WesleyK. Clark and others with "serious violations of International Humanitarian Law within the Jurisdiction of" the very same War Crimes Tribunal, using the same provisions of international law under which Slobodan Milosevic was indicated -'Articles 18.1 and 18.4 of the International Tribunal for Serious Violations of Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia created in 1991. Article 2 of the statute gives the Tribunal the power "to prosecute persons committing or ordering to be committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention including the following:(a) willful killing;(c) willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;(d) extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." Article 3 .gives the Tribunal "the power to prosecute persons violating the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to:(a) employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering;(b) wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;(c) attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings;(d) seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science."
Article 7 provides for individual criminal responsibility of "A person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute, shall be individually responsible for the crime.
"2. The official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility or mitigate punishment.
"3. The fact that any of the acts referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute was committed by a subordinate does not relieve his superior of criminal responsibility if he knew or had reason to know that the subordinate was about to commit such acts or had done so and the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators thereof.4. The fact that an accused person acted pursuant to an order of a Government or of a superior shall not relieve him of criminal responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the International Tribunal determines that justice so requires."
Ramsey Clark, Attorney General for President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s, has created a Commission of Inquiry for an International War Crimes Tribunal to "hold hearings to collect eyewitness, direct, and expert testimony, video footage, photographs, documents, and other evidence as part of an investigation into crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during the U.S./NATO bombing war against Yugoslavia." His group is preparing a multi-point indictment of the U.S. government's conduct in the war against Yugoslavia, which will specifically name Bill Clinton as a war criminal and naming him and others for the bombing of many undefended villages and towns in Yugoslavia and the subsequent murder and ethnic cleansing of Kosovo or all non-Albanian civilians since NATO has taken control of the province.
On July 31 Ramsey Clark's Commission of Inquiry hearing took place in New York City in which it was pointed out that "Until the U.S./NATO occupation forces entered Kosovo on June 8, the village of Belo Polje was an entirely Serb town. Today it lies in smoldering ruins. Soldiers wearing the uniform of the Kosovo Liberation Army murdered Serb civilians, and then looted and torched the whole village, according to June 28 dispatches from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter at the scene in Belo Polje.
"NATO soldiers did nothing to stop the mayhem, the Chronicle reported.
"...In addition to the hundreds of thousands of people made refugees during the NATO bombing campaign, thousands more people of all nationalities were killed.
"How many did the United States lose in combat? None.
"By all objective historical standards this would qualify as one of the great massacres in the modern epoch.
"These warplanes dropped more than 23,000 missiles and bombs on a country of 11 million people. U.S. military planners selected all but one of the bombing targets. The U.S. said it would keep bombing until the Yugoslav government allowed thousands of NATO troops to occupy Kosovo.
"Now the Yugoslav government has relented. The maintenance of "law and order" has fallen to the U.S./NATO occupiers. It is they who are fully responsible for the reign of terror and murder being directed against the minority Serb and Roma populations and the pro-Yugoslav ethnic Albanians being killed by the KLA for "collaborating" with the Yugoslav government.
"In fact, it was the same constellation of forces-pro-Yugoslav Serbs, Roma, Albanian, Croatian and Slovenian people-who constituted the anti-fascist Partisan movement that defeated Hitler's massive invasion 50 years ago."
In effect what seems to be happening is that Clinton's and Madeleine Albright's arrogance in assuming that, as leaders of the World's only Super Power, they were untouchable and that they could break any International Law they wanted to break with impunity may not be entirely accurate. Clinton's fear of indictment may help the conservatives who fear the unbridled and unchecked nature of the proposed ICC. Indictments make strange bedfellows.
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01-07-2002 20:37
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