Comment by rendx
2 months ago
So? How is that the fault of the people working there? Would you want that to happen to you if you were working for a McDonalds, and McDonalds was deemed unhealthy in Europe and banned?
2 months ago
So? How is that the fault of the people working there? Would you want that to happen to you if you were working for a McDonalds, and McDonalds was deemed unhealthy in Europe and banned?
The subject of the article, Kimberly Prost, is one of the specific decisionmakers at the ICC who ruled that the Afghanistan investigation could proceed over American objections. I agree with what I think is your implication, that it wouldn't make much sense to sanction random ICC employees.
What I'd want in some hypothetical situation, though, doesn't have much to do with it. If it were up to me, I'd rather the US ratify the Rome Statute so there's no jurisdictional issue in the first place.
Luz Ibanez: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/life-icc-judge-sanctioned...
I have few words to argue against what I consider to be 'midieval practices' that should not even exist as a thought in 'modern' Western 'democracies' on how to deal with international relations and law. Can you point me at the legal basis for this decision apart from "because we say so"? What crime did they commit? What they did as part of their job is not illegal. The US is not required to join and help actively enforce the court's decisions.
I don't mind differences of opinion. I do mind authoritarian, purely escalatory behavior not fit for a modern society with no rational basis behind it other than rage. There is no educational, pedagogical message behind this. The thought process behind actions like this seems to purely be "We happen to not agree with you, so we are in the right to hurt you" territory. Law enforcement is not meant for punishment for punishment's sake, it is meant to aim for correction. Anything else just creates more polarization and leads to more violence. I thought we had figured that out as civilization. It makes no sense.
Luz Ibanez was another of the judges who made that same ruling.
> I have no words to even argue against what I consider to be 'midieval practices' that should not even exist as a thought in 'modern' Western 'democracies' on how to deal with international relations and law. Can you point me at the legal basis for this decision apart from "because we say so"? What they did as part of their job is not illegal anywhere. The US is not required to join and help actively enforce the court's decisions.
What they did as part of their job is illegal in the US. US law specifies (22 USC 7421, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/7421) that the ICC may not prosecute Americans and the US government should do whatever it can to ensure that doesn't happen. A US court, of course, would not have jurisdiction over the actions of foreign nationals in foreign countries. But the executive, as in most if not all countries, has broad authority to impose sanctions on foreign individuals and organizations who are threatening to unlawfully injure US citizens.
Imagine that Putin set up a Transnational Criminal Court in Moscow, and judges in that court issued an arrest warrant, instructing anyone who can get their hands on Emmanuel Macron to kidnap him and bring him to Moscow to face trial for his government's actions in Mali. That would be a big problem, right? Of course the French government would try to punish the judges for doing that, and it would be more than a little silly to say they shouldn't face any consequences because Russian law authorized the warrant. This is what the US argues the ICC is doing here.
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sending a warning to other ICC judges/employees.
A warning about what? That the US thinks it rules the world and is terrified enough to go after individuals who just happen to work for the wrong employer? That other parts of the world are not allowed to have their own sense and modalities of justice?
> A warning about what?
It's basically a warning against attempting to apply jurisdiction to countries that are not parties to the Rome Statute.
> That the US thinks it rules the world and is terrified enough to go after individuals who just happen to work for the wrong employer?
The sanctions are due to specific actions(i.e. rulings) taken by the individuals against US and their allies.[0]
> That other parts of the world are not allowed to have their own sense and modalities of justice?
The issue is mostly one of jurisdiction, the ICC is attempting to unilaterally impose jurisdiction on to states that never agreed to delegate authority whatsoever to the ICC.
[0] https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
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