UN Kangaroo Court Implodes Amid Threat to Prosecute U.S. Troops

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Even as it threatens to illegally prosecute American soldiers, the dictator-dominated United Nations judicial body known as the “International Criminal Court” is imploding spectacularly on the world stage. With the withdrawal of the Russian government this week and South African authorities last month — not to mention the fact that the U.S. government never joined in the first place — the ICC appears to be on its deathbed. Other African and Asian governments are also preparing to exit the outfit. The establishment and various globalists are outraged, of course. But for humanity and the cause of true justice, the dictatorship-infested ICC’s collapse is great news, as anyone familiar with the UN kangaroo court and its operation can attest.

On November 14, the Hague-based ICC, perhaps hoping to make itself appear relevant amid a growing wave of formal withdrawals, issued a threat about potentially prosecuting U.S. troops. “Members of U.S. armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014,” read a “report” issued by ICC’s self-styled “chief prosecutor” Fatou Bensouda (shown), a controversial Muslim lawyer from Gambia who served one of the most oppressive dictators in the world before taking the UN ICC post. The threats follow calls for Bush and Obama to be prosecuted for war crimes, too.

The kangaroo court’s “chief prosecutor” also claimed that operatives with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency might have subjected more than two dozen detainees to “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape” between December 2002 and March 2008. The alleged crimes took place in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania, according to the report. Echoing previous rhetoric, ICC “prosecutors” said they would “imminently” decide whether to try and press forward with a full-scale investigation and possible war-crimes charges against U.S. military and intelligence personnel. The court also claims jurisdiction over vague “crimes of aggression.”

Whether the baseless threat to illegally prosecute U.S. forces was an effort to stem the exodus of members from the troubled and widely ridiculed court was not immediately clear. But while the ICC has in the past issued illegitimate threats to prosecute Americans over supposed crimes in places such as Libya, the threats have generally been ignored, because the court has no jurisdiction over Americans. By claiming that the alleged crimes by U.S. troops took place in nations where authorities have signed on to the Rome Statute, which created the court, the ICC now claims it may be able to investigate and prosecute Americans without constitutional protections.

Under normal circumstances, the U.S. government might kindly remind the ICC of its irrelevance and lack of jurisdiction, and that would be the end of the story. After all, American courts and officials are perfectly capable of prosecuting any of the crimes alleged to have been committed — all of which are serious crimes under U.S. law. Instead, though, the Obama administration, even while expressing doubts that U.S. troops would actually be prosecuted, has attempted to legitimize the ICC’s usurpation of jurisdiction by taking the threats seriously and treating them as legitimate, despite the fact that such schemes might open him and his top officials up to war-crimes trials.

After the ICC prosecutors’ threats against Americans were released, Obama State Department spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau said the Obama administration did not believe the ICC investigation was “warranted or appropriate.” What the department did not say was what it should have said: The ICC is a rogue body with mass-murdering tyrants as members that has no authority to investigate or prosecute Americans under its pseudo-justice system. Obama might have also reminded the ICC that it includes none of the U.S. Constitution’s protections that ordinarily would ensure that suspects’ rights, presumption of innocence, and due process are upheld.

The many reasons why Americans should (and do) avoid the ICC like the plague have long been common knowledge among clear-thinking legal experts. The late Dr. Charles Rice, a professor of law at Notre Dame University, called the ICC “a monster” that essentially “repudiates the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and cancels the 4th of July.” Especially troubling, he said, is that the court acknowledges no boundaries to its supposed authority. “In our system, law is supposed to be a rule of reason which, in a sense, controls the state and compels the state to operate under the law,” Dr. Rice explained. “What are the limits on the ICC? There are none. It’s insane!”

But that sort of view of coercive power is widespread in the outgoing Obama administration, which was thoroughly repudiated by voters via the rejection of Hillary Clinton. Indeed, the Obama administration, which has been illegally trying to legitimize the court from the start of Obama’s term, pretended in its statement that the probe was legitimate. “The United States is deeply committed to complying with the law of war, and we have a robust national system of investigation and accountability that more than meets international standards,” Trudeau added. In reality, Americans and the U.S. government are not legally bound in any way to the dangerous “international standards” of the dictators clubs that are the UN and its kangaroo courts.

But even as Obama seeks to legitimize the pseudo-court’s usurpations and attacks against Americans and the U.S. justice system, the ICC is still imploding and becoming a joke. The latest devastating blow to the court came this week, when the Kremlin issued a decree withdrawing from the self-styled court over its alleged bias and politicization of investigations — especially as it relates to Putin’s controversial annexation of Crimea. The blow is particularly harmful coming from the Russian government, which was one of the architects of the court and one of its chief boosters for many years, including amid the civil war in Syria.

Russian officials blasted the ICC in public statements after announcing the withdrawal. “The resolution signed by Vladimir Putin on Russia’s refusal to remain a member of the Rome Statute did not come out of the blue,” First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Frants Klintsevich was quoted as saying by Russian media outlets this week. “Almost all investigations by the ICC concerning Russia have been politicized if not biased.” He cited the ICC’s refusal to investigate the 2008 conflict in South Ossetia as an example.

In the months before the Kremlin withdrew, several African governments did as well. Most prominent among them, perhaps, was the increasingly autocratic regime ruling South Africa. Genocide experts for years sounded the alarm about the Communist Party-dominated regime — especially when corrupt President Jacob Zuma went on national TV and encouraged genocide against the vulnerable Afrikaaner minority. But the chances of that regime facing justice at the ICC for that were slim to none anyway. Instead, what appears to have triggered the withdrawal was an ICC order that South African authorities arrest their genocidal ally, Sudanese dictator Omar Bashir. The regimes in Burundi and Gambia also withdrew in recent months, and many of the rest of Africa’s governments are considering mass withdrawal.

But in Africa, the ICC has been losing legitimacy for many years — and for good reason. While complaints among African dictators about an anti-African bias at the court are perhaps overblown — many of the ICC “judges” are Africans — there are very legitimate concerns surrounding the UN’s kangaroo court. Perhaps most alarming to observers around the world, from an African perspective at least, was the UN-backed overthrow of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and his subsequent railroading by the UN’s farcical “justice” regime.

The elected Christian president challenged vote fraud by a Muslim central banker, and won at the nation’s constitutional court, which is supposed to decide such matters. But the UN decided to ignore that nation’s constitutional procedures and support brutal Islamic militias that butchered their way to the capital, slaughtering thousands of Christians to install the brutal UN-backed usurper and tyrant with a history of loyalty to globalism. (Imagine the UN invading America and arresting George W. Bush because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Bush instead of Gore following the election dispute).

Gbagbo is now the first head of state to be taken into custody by the kangaroo court, offering a strong warning to nations worldwide about the dangers of joining the UN’s extremist “justice” outfit. Meanwhile, the predatory UN “peacekeeping” troops that, according to surveys, regularly raped and sexually exploited four out of five underage girls in Ivorian towns, remain at large.

U.S. government-funded propaganda organs loyal to Obama, such as Voice of America, cited establishment-minded “human-rights groups” to claim that Putin’s withdrawal from the ICC was a “bad sign for justice.” Various tax-funded globalist “Non-Governmental Organizations” (NGOs) have also been whining about the alleged need for governments to join or remain involved with the UN’s court. But even former U.S. President George W. Bush, a pro-UN globalist, withdrew Bill Clinton’s signature on the Rome treaty, which was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, because of the threat of unfair prosecutions of Americans for political reasons. Far from being a “bad sign,” the implosion of the ICC is great news to supporters of justice everywhere.

As this magazine has been documenting since before the ICC was born, the UN and its pseudo-courts — including special courts such as the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon, infamous for trying to jail journalists for doing their job — are a threat to freedom, justice, and national independence around the world. If U.S. troops actually tortured or raped somebody, they can and should be prosecuted — by Americans in American courts with all the standard constitutional protections and guarantees that Americans are entitled to, not by representatives of dictators and oppressive Third World regimes in globalist kangaroo courts with no limits on their power. So while Putin and company may have their own less-than-noble reasons for ditching the ICC, humanity can rest easier knowing that the UN’s kangaroo court is one step closer to landing on the ash-heap of history where it belongs.

Photo of ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at [email protected]