Comment by megous
4 hours ago
Right. I was not very careful with "only if". :)
In any case ICC warrants are not public. Only state parties know the content of the warrants. We don't know what's exactly in them. Only PR is public.
Anyway, it sounded like you're arguing that ICC warrant is something OTP asks for willy nilly on suspicion of a crime. But there is a long prior process where even opening the investigation has to be approved by the chamber or asked for by a state party. Then there's investigation, which in this case was likely quite extensive and helped by third parties, given that just Pillay's UN commission of inquiry alone provided ~7000 pieces of verified evidence and that's just scratching the surface, given that several state parties refered the situation in Palestine to the court, including Palestine itself, court does its own outreach to victims, and I know several projects that periodically sent/d tons of data collected from social media where Israeli state itself publicly posted its massacres of hundreds of civilians per strike early on.
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2024/6/19/never-see...
> Anyway, it sounded like you're arguing that ICC warrant is something OTP asks for willy nilly on suspicion of a crime. But there is a long prior process where even opening the investigation has to be approved by the chamber or asked for by a state party.
I don't think its willy nilly. The office of the prosecutor did significant investigation to get to this point. Its just far away from a guilty verdict.
Even at the pretrial stage the court rejected some of the charges proposed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor asked for a charge of extermination, but the pre trial chamber found there wasn't evidence of the requirements being met. Its entirely plausible at an actual trial some of the other charges might be rejected.
From what i understand the conviction rate of the ICC is fairly low (if you include people who had warrants/summons but had case dropped before it went to trial as while as people acquited). Which isn't a bad thing, it means it is a fair court.
> Pillay's UN commission of inquiry alone provided ~7000 pieces of verified evidence
Justice isn't a numbers game. The quality not the quantity rules the day (not necessarily saying the evidence isn't quality - i havent seen it, just that the number of items is irrelavent)
> several state parties refered the situation in Palestine to the court,
state party referrals tend to be a joke. People refer things to the court for all sorts of political grandstanding reasons. The prosecutor is the person that matters when bringing a case.
Ultimately, part of the reason to have trials is so the accused can present evidence in their defense. Its an important part of determining a just verdict.