Trump Protects American Troops from Foreign Political Prosecution
President Donald Trump came down hard on the International Criminal Court on Thursday by authorizing economic sanctions and travel restrictions against court workers involved in investigating American troops and intelligence officials.
“The International Criminal Court’s actions are an attack on the rights of the American people and threaten to infringe upon our national sovereignty,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.
“The ICC was established to provide accountability for war crimes, but in practice it has been an unaccountable and ineffective international bureaucracy that targets and threatens United States personnel as well as personnel of our allies and partners.”
The executive order authorized the secretary of state, in consultation with the treasury secretary, to block financial assets of court personnel who directly engage in investigating, harassing or detaining U.S. personnel.
It also authorized the secretary of state to block ICC court officials and their family members involved in the investigations from entering the United States, going beyond the travel restrictions issued by the State Department last year.
McEnany said that, despite repeated calls by the United States and its allies, the ICC has not embraced reform. She alleged the court continues to pursue politically motivated investigations against the U.S. and its partners, including Israel.
“We are concerned that adversary nations are manipulating the International Criminal Court by encouraging these allegations against United States personnel,” McEnany said.
“Further, we have strong reason to believe there is corruption and misconduct at the highest levels of the International Criminal Court office of the prosecutor, calling into question the integrity of its investigation into American service members.”
A senior administration official said the U.S. believes the international court is a target of malign influence by Russia.
The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue, said the administration believes Moscow is encouraging the court to investigate U.S. personnel but did not provide further details.
The Hague-based court was created in 2002 to prosecute war crimes and crimes of humanity and genocide in areas where perpetrators might not otherwise face justice. It has 123 state parties.
The United States has never been a member of the International Criminal Court.
Administrations of both parties have been concerned about the potential for political prosecutions of American troops and officials. The U.S. has received pledges from most of the court’s members that they will not seek such prosecutions and risk losing U.S. military and other assistance.
However, ICC prosecutors have pressed ahead with investigations into U.S. service members and earlier this year launched one that drew swift U.S. condemnation.
Last year, after former national security adviser John Bolton threatened ICC employees with sanctions if they went forward with prosecutions of U.S. or allied troops, including from Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revoked the visa of the court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
Bensouda had asked ICC judges to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan that could have involved Americans. The judges initially rejected the request, but the denial was overturned after Bensouda appealed the decision and the investigation was authorized in March.
The appellate ruling marked the first time the court’s prosecutor has been cleared to investigate U.S. forces, and set the global tribunal on a collision course with the Trump administration. Bensouda pledged to carry out an independent and impartial investigation and called for full support and cooperation from all parties.
Pompeo called the decision “a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body.”
The case involves allegations of war crimes committed by Afghan national security forces, Taliban and Haqqani network militants, as well as U.S. forces and intelligence officials in Afghanistan since May 2003.
Bolton and then Pompeo have said such steps are necessary to prevent the ICC from infringing on U.S. sovereignty by prosecuting American forces or allies.
Pompeo said in May the U.S. is capable of punishing its own citizens for atrocities and shouldn’t be subjected to a foreign tribunal that’s designed to be a court of last resort to prosecute war crimes cases when a country’s judiciary is incapable of doing so.
“This court has become corrupted and is attempting to go after the young men and women of the United States of America who fought so hard, and they did so under the rule of law in the most civilized nation in the world, the United States of America,” Pompeo said May 29 in a podcast hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
“And they’re now suggesting somehow that our ability to, when we have someone does something wrong, our ability to police that up is inadequate and they think that the ICC ought to be able to haul these young men and women in.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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