US bars entry to International Criminal Court investigators

[Valin]

AP

MATTHEW LEE

Mar. 15 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will revoke or deny visas to International Criminal Court personnel seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and other abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and may do the same with those who seek action against Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday.

Pompeo, acting on a threat delivered in September by U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, framed the action as necessary to prevent the international body from infringing on U.S. sovereignty by prosecuting American forces or allies for torture or other war crimes.

“We are determined to protect the American and allied military and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation,” Pompeo said.

U.S. officials have long regarded the Netherlands-based ICC with hostility, arguing that American courts are capable of handling any allegations against U.S. forces and questioning the motives of an international court.

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[Valin]

In other news............Those Darn Jews..................

About Time: Pro-Israel Lawyers Question Jurisdiction Of International Criminal Court

Josh Hammmer

Mar. 15 2019

On Friday, an international group of pro-Israel lawyers submitted formal evidence that challenges the infamously anti-Israel International Criminal Court's (ICC) jurisdiction over Israeli "settlements" in the historical Jewish homeland of Judea and Samara — otherwise frequently referred to as the "West Bank." Despite much of the "international community" settling on an alternative viewpoint, the most straightforward application of longstanding principles of international law is that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria is entirely lawful.

Here is an excerpt of the press release from the pro-Israel group The Lawfare Project:

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As Kay concluded in a complementary article released yesterday: "Where there is a dispute which engages individual petitioners’ rights under international humanitarian, human rights, and national administrative law, affected communities have a right of civil and public law redress in Israel. These are principally public law and land law related disputes and the civil courts are the appropriate forum to investigate and determine them prior to a criminal investigation."

The United States is not a party to the previously referenced Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002. Over 120 countries presently are members of the ICC. Conservatives have long been critical of the ICC, in accordance with a general belief that a delegation of jurisdiction over criminal matters to an unaccountable transnational body is at fundamental loggerheads with rudimentary principles of republican self-governance — to say nothing of the Supremacy Clause of Art. VI of the U.S. Constitution itself.