- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The
Bush administration is pursuing its campaign to protect Americans from
International Criminal Court jurisdiction even as it deals with the Iraqi
prisoner abuse scandal that may involve some of the very war crimes the
court was created to handle.
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- So far 89 countries have signed agreements with Washington
promising that Americans accused of grave international offenses, including
soldiers charged with war crimes, will be returned to U.S. jurisdiction
so their cases can be decided by fellow Americans rather than international
jurists.
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- Other states may soon be added, officials said this week.
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- "It's never been our argument that Americans are
angels," one senior U.S. official told Reuters.
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- "Our argument has been if Americans commit war crimes
or human rights violations, we will handle them. And we will," he
added.
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- The permanent court was established in 2002 after ad
hoc institutions dealt with war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
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- But President Bush opposed it and insisted on so-called
Article 98 agreements under which countries guaranteed not to surrender
Americans to ICC prosecution.
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- With military and civilians on peacekeeping and humanitarian
missions in 100 countries, Washington must preserve its independence to
defend its national interests worldwide, U.S. officials said.
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- This position is coming under new scrutiny following
publication of photographs showing U.S. army soldiers abusing and humiliating
Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
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- The photos have fueled international outrage and severely
damaged U.S. credibility. U.S. officials promise the guilty will be punished
but rights experts worry prosecutions will focus on lower-ranking soldiers,
not their superiors.
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- WAR CRIMES PROSECUTION
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- "The political reality is that its going to be harder
now to persuade democratically elected leaders to immunize the U.S. military
from war crimes prosecution," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy
director for Human Rights Watch.
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- While some states may be more reluctant to sign the bilateral
immunity agreements, it is unclear they can avoid it, said Anthony Dworkin,
London-based editor of the Crimes of War Project Web site .
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- U.S. law prohibits military aid to countries that do
not sign immunity accords and Washington has used this lever to exert "enormous
pressure" on countries to sign, he said.
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- Some legal experts disagree with the use of Article 98
agreements and question government insistence that U.S. military interrogation
rules in Iraq and elsewhere comply with the Geneva Convention.
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- Washington "is reluctant to test its interpretation"
before international jurists, Dworkin said.
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- "All of us are appalled by those prisoner abuse
photos and we need to address them," a U.S. official said.
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- "But the idea that the ICC would come in and judge
whether we did enough ... that's where the politicization comes and where
those who might have opposed the Iraq war in the first place could use
that as an opportunity to whack us," he said.
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- Another official said: "You can't get out of these
things by having somebody go to trial in international court. The only
way to repair our authority and reputation is to show that we find the
behavior abhorrent and are going to punish it."
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- Europe has resisted U.S. pressure and countries with
major concentrations of U.S. forces, like Germany, Japan and South Korea,
have not signed immunity pacts with the United States.
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- http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5150872
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