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(Darfur), Central African Republic (2), Kenya, Libya, Côte D’Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, Burundi Situations under official investigation by the ICC: Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan (Darfur), Central African Republic (2), Kenya, Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Georgia, Burundi Preliminary Examinations: Afghanistan, Colombia, Gabon, Guinea, Iraq (UK), Nigeria, Palestine, Ukraine, Mavi Marmara ship The prosecutor recently requested permission to open a formal investigation into crimes committed in Afghanistan. This includes crimes committed by US officials, in particular, torture and ill-treatment. Convicted by the ICC: Thomas Lubanga (Dem. Rep. of Congo), Germain Katanga (Dem. Rep. of Congo), Jean-Pierre Bemba (Central African Republic), Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi (Mali) On trial at the ICC: Bosco Ntaganda (DR Congo), Laurent Gbagbo (Côte d’Ivoire), Charles Blé Goudé (Côte d’Ivoire), Dominic Ongwen (Uganda) Wanted for trial at the ICC: Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), Seif al-Islam Gaddafi (Libya), Joseph Kony (Uganda), and several others Laurent Gbagbo, former president of Côte d’Ivoire David Bosco, Rough Justice • Does politics affect the conduct of the ICC? – Major powers – Other states – The ICC (prosecutor) • Bosco’s claim: There has emerged a politics of mutual accommodation between the ICC prosecutor and the major powers. • Law is not effaced, but nor does it displace politics. • What posture will major powers adopt towards ICC? – marginalization – control – acceptance • What type of behavior will the prosecutor adopt towards the major powers? – apolitical – pragmatic – strategic – captured Darfur, Sudan, as case study Omar al-Bashir, president of Sudan Darfur, Sudan, as case study • January 2005. UN Commission of Inquiry recommends Security Council referral to ICC • March 2005. UN Security Council refers Darfur situation to ICC. • February 2007. ICC prosecutor seeks indictments against Ahmed Haroun (cabinet minister) and Ali Kushayb (pro-government militia leader) • April 2007. ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Haroun and Kushayb. • July 2008. ICC prosecutor seeks indictment against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. • March 2009. ICC judges issue arrest warrant against Bashir for WC and CAH, but not genocide. • July 2010. ICC judges reinstate genocide charge against Bashir. Darfur, Africa, and the ICC • Bashir seeks to mobilize African opposition to the ICC. • African Union encourages member states to withhold cooperation from the ICC. African countries are divided. • Burundi has withdrawn from the ICC treaty. (South Africa has made moves to withdraw.) • Is the ICC biased against Africa? Some Virtues of the ICC:! 1. It invites countries to make their own commitment to human rights and democracy. (A desirable alternative to costly and dangerous attempts to impose democracy from the outside.) 2. It publicizes, teaches, and reinforces values of human rights and international humanitarian law. 3. It embodies principles of reciprocity that discourage the corruption of international justice. Seeks to overcome the problem of victor’s justice. 4. It is an opportunity to collect and publicize information about human rights atrocities. 5. It provides an opportunity to mobilize concerted international action in response to human rights atrocities. 6. It can serve as a catalyst for domestic change Features of the ICC to which the United States government has objected: • Jurisdiction over non-party nationals • Ability to act independently of the UN Security Council • Power of prosecutorial initiative Question: • To what extent have political considerations guided the decisions of the ICC prosecutor? • Is it appropriate for the ICC prosecutor to be sometimes guided by political considerations? Detention and Interrogation Practices of the United States in the “War on Terror.” • The torture question: What has been the pattern and extent of torture? How did the Bush administration come to institutionalize torture? How did it seek to justify its policy despite the absolute international prohibition of torture and ill-treatment? Did the Obama administration put an end to torture? Will the Trump presidency reintroduce torture? • The detention question: Is the US practice of detaining “enemy combatants” legally and morally legitimate? Does it violate the human right to liberty as defined under international and U.S. law? • What can and should be done to stop these human rights abuses and prevent their recurrence? Murat Kurnaz The contexts of torture in the US “War on Terror” • Afghanistan • Guantánamo Bay • Iraq, various detention centers -- abuses at Abu Ghraib prison captured on camera • CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in “black sites” around the world • Extraordinary rendition, or “outsourcing torture” – sending individuals to be tortured by the security forces of other governments. Abuse and torture in Guantanamo • Sleep deprivation, stress positions, extreme temperatures, prolonged isolation, beating, sexual humiliation, hooding, nudity, forcing prisoners to urinate themselves, 24-hour lighting, cigarette burning, mind-altering drugs, forced feeding of hunger strikers. • Elsewhere, torture methods also included water-boarding, “rectal feeding,” diapering. • International Committee of the Red Cross: interrogation methods at Guantanamo “tantamount to torture.” • Several people died from torture in U.S military installations and CIA black sites. Some Guantanamo prisoners may have died from torture. Abuse and torture in Guantanamo, cont. Mohammed al-Qahtani Mohamedou Ould Slahi Jan. 2009: Susan Crawford, senior Pentagon official, withdraws charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, stating that he was tortured. In the CIA black sites Abu Zubaydah … and many others Torture, euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” was authorized by President Bush and members of his cabinet. • Puzzle: How could the Bush administration authorize torture even though it is a crime under both international and domestic law? • Torture methods adapted from SERE program (SERE = “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape”) in the US military. • James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen, two former military psychologists, helped devise the program, using the theory of “learned helplessness.” • Long-time standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, hypothermia, nakedness, loud noise, sexual humiliation, prolonged isolation, close confinement, head-slamming, beatings, waterboarding. • Techniques first authorized for CIA, but quickly adopted by the US military. Several detainees in US custody died as a result of this treatment. US torture policy, cont. • US torture policy documented by ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Int’l Committee of the Red Cross • Senate Armed Services Committee Report, 2008 • The Constitution Project, Report of the Bipartisan Taskforce on Detainee Treatment, 2013 • Much information contained in the 6000-page Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on CIA Interrogations, still kept secret. The 500-page executive summary of this report was released in December 2014. Why these methods are properly called “torture.” • They fit the legal definition of torture: the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, mental or physical. • These methods have considered torture for centuries. • The US government has referred to these methods as “torture” when used by other governments. • Water-boarding called “torture” by US federal appeals court in 1984. • In any event, methods that do not rise to the level of torture are absolutely prohibited by international and US law if they constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. • “[US officials] tortured innocent people. They tortured people very likely guilty of terrorism-related crimes, but ruined all chance of prosecuting these people thanks to the torture. They tortured the innocent and the likely-guilty alike when the torture had nothing to do with imminent threats: they tortured people based on bad information extracted from people they had tortured… they tortured to get specific information they wanted, as when detainees were pressed about links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda; they tortured to hide their mistakes, as when they used coerced statements by Guantanamo detainees to build cases against fellow detainees they had not business holding in the first place. They tortured people to break them, pure and simple.” Larry Siems, The Torture Report: What the Documents Say About America’s Post-9/11 Torture Program (New York: OR Books, 2011)..
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