"ICC was a hoax from the start"
The Electronic Intifada | By Ali Abunimah | 04.04.2012 | NEDERLANDS
The International Criminal Court (ICC) “was a hoax from the start.”
So said Michael Mandel, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, in response to the ICC Prosecutor’s shocking decision yesterday to refuse jurisdiction over Gaza war crimes without even referring the matter to judges.
In comments to the Institute for Public Accuracy, Mandel, author of How America Gets Away With Murder, Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity elaborated:
It’s disgraceful but not surprising that the ICC has dismissed Palestine’s complaint against Israel. It sat on the complaint for over three years, always proudly announcing that it was investigating it to give the appearance of impartiality. Meanwhile the ICC jumped to attention in less than three weeks when the US government, which is not a signatory to the treaty, wanted to go to war against Libya, justifying Western aggression with bogus charges against the Libyan regime.
Referring to Luis Moreno Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mandel said:
Ocampo and company have been busy putting Africa on trial for crimes aided, abetted and exploited by the rich countries, while the US government killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans, and Israel has been committing Nuremberg’s ‘supreme international crime’ of aggression against the Palestinians for 45 years.
Amnesty International presses for reconsideration
Yesterday Amnesty International strongly condemned as “dangerous” and “political” the decision by the ICC Prosecutor to refuse to investigate war crimes committed in the course of Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on the Gaza Strip, on the grounds that Palestine is not a “state.”
Amnesty stated that the determination as to whether the ICC had jurisdiction is one that had to be made by the judges, not by prosecutors.
Continue reading →
→ PCHRA Dark Day for International Justice: ICC Office of the Prosecutor decides not to open investigations into situation of Palestine
→ Amnesty International ICC Prosecutor statement: Fears over justice for Gaza victims
→ Amnesty International Amnesty International’s response to the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s statement that it cannot investigate crimes committed during the Gaza conflict
→ Amnesty International Operation ‘Cast Lead’: 22 Days of Death and Destruction
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