{"id":16719,"date":"2020-03-05T08:45:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T13:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=16719"},"modified":"2020-03-05T08:45:06","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T13:45:06","slug":"afghan-conflict-top-court-backs-war-crimes-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2020\/03\/05\/afghan-conflict-top-court-backs-war-crimes-probe\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan conflict: Top court backs war crimes probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

An investigation of alleged war crimes by the US and others in the Afghan conflict can go ahead, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has ruled.<\/p>\n

The ICC overturned on appeal a previous decision to block the investigation.<\/p>\n

The actions of the Taliban, the Afghan government and US troops since May 2003 are expected to be examined.<\/p>\n

The US is not a signatory of the ICC and does not recognise its authority over American citizens.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan is a member of the court but officials have expressed opposition to the inquiry.<\/p>\n

In April 2019 a pre-trial chamber at the ICC ruled that the investigation should not go ahead because it would not “serve the interests of justice”.<\/p>\n

ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has been seeking a formal investigation into the alleged crimes since 2017.<\/p>\n

The US opposes the investigation, and last year the Trump administration imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions on ICC officials.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has also pardoned troops prosecuted in the US for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

The ICC ruling comes days after\u00a0the US and the Taliban signed a deal aimed at bringing peace to Afghanistan\u00a0<\/a>after more than 18 years of conflict.<\/p>\n

What did the court say?<\/h2>\n

Presiding appeals judge Piotr Hofmanski said the original pre-trial judges had made a mistake.<\/p>\n

They had said that an investigation would not be in the interests of justice because it was unlikely to result in successful prosecutions.<\/p>\n

But Judge Hofmanski ruled that they had exceeded their powers.<\/p>\n

He said that Ms Bensouda’s request did meet the criteria, by showing there was a reasonable basis to believe crimes that fall within the court’s jurisdiction may have been committed.<\/p>\n

What are the allegations?<\/h2>\n

A preliminary investigation lasting more than a decade examined crimes including intentional attacks against civilians, imprisonment and extra-judicial executions.<\/p>\n

A 2016 report from the ICC said there was a reasonable basis to believe the US military had committed torture<\/a>\u00a0at secret detention sites operated by the CIA.<\/p>\n

The report also said it was reasonable to believe the Afghan government had tortured prisoners and the Taliban had committed war crimes such as the mass killing of civilians.<\/p>\n

An important moment<\/h2>\n
\"Analysis<\/span><\/figure>\n

The International Criminal Court has long been criticised for spending far too much of its time looking at the alleged crimes of smaller – often African – nations and shying away from taking cases involving major world players.<\/p>\n

So to this extent its investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan is an important moment.<\/p>\n

Its remit is to look at the behaviour of the Taliban, the Afghan Government’s forces and of course the Americans.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the problem. The United States is not a party to the ICC and is unlikely to co-operate with it. More generally Afghanistan is still far from being at peace.<\/p>\n

There will be those who see some kind of judicial process to hold wrong-doers to account as being an essential part of reconciliation in the country. But the practical problems facing any ICC mission may be insurmountable.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An investigation of alleged war crimes by the US and others in the Afghan conflict can go ahead, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has ruled. The ICC overturned on appeal a previous decision to block […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3,6],"tags":[2992,979,978,2490,850],"class_list":{"0":"post-16719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"category-world","11":"tag-afghanistan","12":"tag-icc","13":"tag-international-criminal-court","14":"tag-taliban","15":"tag-war-crimes","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16721,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16719\/revisions\/16721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}