This footage showing British troops torturing Iraqi prisoners in 2003
was one of the first in a series of images
revealing a culture of impunity
amongst UK forces occupying Iraq between 2003 and 2009.
So you have a pattern of hooding,
sleep deprivation, of long standing, of beatings
and sexual and religious humiliation.
I saw soldiers from my battalion
striking these prisoners open-handed, close-handed,
with boots, with rifles.
Following a six-year preliminary examination,
the International Criminal Court’s lead prosecutor
concluded in December 2020
that there was a reasonable basis to believe British troops
had committed war crimes and torture.
They tortured me in different ways, mentally and physically.
The preliminary examination
also raised credible allegations of rape and murder.
Nevertheless, the ICC decided to abandon its inquiry.
Two months later,
Dominic Ongwen was handed a guilty verdict by the ICC
for atrocities committed as a commander of
the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda between 2002 and 2005,
including murder, torture and rape.
Dominic Ongwen has been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Why the ICC decided to pursue one case and not the other
has reignited claims that the court has an African bias.
Of those people that have been indicted by ICC,
99 percent are Africans.
Of the court’s current 14 active investigations,
12 involve African and Middle Eastern states.
And all of the 30 cases brought before the court
have been against African nationals,
causing many to question:
is the International Criminal Court racist?
We all understand that the International Criminal Court
is a court of last resort.
There must be a court
that stands up for those who cannot defend themselves.
Established in 1998 but founded in 2002,
the ICC was created to punish the worst of humanity
when national courts failed to prosecute.
The history of the ICC in a lot of ways
goes back to the Nuremberg trials
to prosecute people individually
for major crimes committed during wartime.
[This tribunal] sentences you to death by hanging.
They never looked into the atrocities that the US, Britain,
and Australia had also committed during the Second World War.
So there’s always been this concern with international law
that it was a tool of the victors, of the powerful states.
The purpose of the International Criminal Court
is to create this global permanent court
that can deal with crimes against humanity
wherever they happen around the world.
And those are war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide,
and the crime of aggression.
One hundred and twenty-three countries
are currently members of the ICC,
but a few global superpowers are noticeably absent,
including the United States, Russia, and China.
The court must be allowed the proper space
to focus on its duties free from unwarranted resistance.
But not all countries are on board with being investigated.
As far as America is concerned,
the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority.
As a member of the UN Security Council,
the US can still refer cases to the ICC,
as it did with Libya in 2011.
However, when it comes to their own conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan...
We will provide no assistance to the ICC,
and we certainly will not join the ICC.
For all intents and purposes,
the ICC is already dead to us.
Despite not being affiliated,
the ICC is able to investigate the US
if the alleged war crimes take place within any of its member states.
However, when the ICC launched an inquiry
into atrocities in Afghanistan, a member of the court,
Trump responded by issuing an executive order
and slapping sanctions on the lead prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda,
and members of her staff.
We will take all necessary measures
to protect our citizens from this renegade, unlawful, so-called court.
These attacks constitute an escalation
and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law
and the court’s judicial proceedings.
The UK, which is a member of the ICC,
has rebuffed its scrutiny by saying they could handle
the investigation of their own soldiers for war crimes themselves
and created the Overseas Operations Bill,
which would eliminate the possibility of UK soldiers
being prosecuted for crimes committed abroad after five years.
The suggestion that the best-trained
and best-led armed forces in the world
are somehow predisposed to inflicting torture
or sex crimes on operations
is frankly ridiculous.
It’s right that this government sticks by its pledge to say,
“Look, we don’t want vexatious investigations.”
I ask for justice and the International Criminal Court
to consider making a case and taking the necessary steps for my case
against the British Forces.
The UK authorities were telling the ICC that,
“Look, we don’t need you
because our domestic authorities are investigating these actions in Iraq.”
What makes this decision particularly egregious
is that there’s plenty of evidence that the UK authorities
are not serious about looking into those crimes.
As of 2017,
the British Ministry of Defence has only convicted one soldier,
but has also paid out 19.8 million pounds
in out-of-court settlements in 326 cases
out of a further 1,145 claims
that are related to conduct of British forces in Iraq.
The UK has also paid out an undisclosed amount to victims
or their relatives in an additional 4,400 cases.
Individuals like Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony,
to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi,
son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s fallen leader Muammar,
have been indicted for various crimes, including genocide,
with a total of 35 arrest warrants since 2002
and a cumulative budget of over 2 billion euros.
The overall sentence imposed on you
shall therefore be 30 years of imprisonment.
One hundred and twenty-three countries have joined the ICC,
so it’s approximately two-thirds of the countries in the world.
And it's been a real frustration
for many affected populations in African states.
It's only ever gone after rebel leaders
or relatively small actors in these conflicts.
It shows a real reluctance on the part of the ICC
to go after much more powerful political actors.
And as long as it continues down that vein,
I think it will always struggle to get rid of this reputation
that it's ultimately a colonial tool.
And of the nine individuals
they have convicted over the past two decades,
seven have been from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Global South pushed it
to have these crimes to be qualified as international crimes:
the use of mercenaries, or international drug trafficking
or terrorism or colonialism
or willful destruction of the environment.
But European states and Western powers were against this,
and then they ended up winning this struggle.
The US, the UK, Russia, China, Germany,
they really tried to constrain the creation of the ICC
to avoid the kinds of things
that they were involved in around the world,
which is often about powerful states
invading the territory of weaker states
and engaging in that kind of neocolonial activity.
On Friday, President Bush signed into law
the American Service Members Protection Act of 2002,
which will supposedly protect US service members from
the International Criminal Court.
So the United States can actually say to the International Criminal Court,
“Please can you start a case in South Sudan?
General Omar al-Bashir must answer to these cases.”
Yet the United States itself and all its citizens are exempt from
the same laws that they are compelling everybody to go through.
This is very problematic for us in Africa.
Both the prosecution and the defense at the ICC
have never used a single African investigator.
They’ve never been to any part of Africa
before they started investigating these very complicated crimes.
My view is that racism is not the problem,
but racism is a symptom of the problem.
The ICC is a anti-colonialism tool.
What should I do? Oh no!
I should do a Scottish guy or a Swedish guy
before I do a Black guy?
No, I don’t care about race.
I had to protect the victims. That’s my job.
Stuck between a moral rock and a colonial hard place,
some African leaders have threatened to leave the ICC,
with Burundi jumping ship in 2017, calling it unfair and racist.
And it's not just Burundi.
The Philippines have also left the court
after preliminary accusations against Duterte and other top officials
were investigated for mass murder
and crimes against humanity
that occurred during the infamous drug crackdown.
Please do not drag me into that ICC.
I will not submit to you, you idiots.
And the government of Burundi also said,
“We’re going to pull out of the court.”
That doesn’t actually take away the jurisdiction of the court.
Burundi is pulling out of the International Criminal Court
six months after the court indicated it would investigate
the violence which killed hundreds of people.
The ICC often points out
that most African cases have been self-referrals.
Many African states have realized that it’s very useful
to have the ICC come and investigate these cases,
to deal with their enemies, to deal with non-state actors,
as long as they don’t start snooping into
what governments have also been doing during these conflicts.
We need a Magna Carta for global systems.
The nation state is the most important legal design to protect us.
But it was done in the 17th century, 18th century, [the] Democratic one.
The court has recently broadened its focus
to investigate war crimes committed by the Taliban
but also US forces in Afghanistan
and is also investigating Russia for crimes committed in Georgia.
I think the ICC is bound to always be used for
reasons that go beyond just the legal questions.
I'm one of those extremely frustrated supporters of the ICC.
If the court lived up to what it says it’s going to do in its own statute,
then it would be a force for good.
Then, without fear or favor,
it would investigate and prosecute cases around the world.
But what we’ve seen is a highly politicized court
that hasn’t gone after the most powerful actors.