President Joe Biden has not acted to resolve a dispute that pits the Defence Department against other agencies. Read more at straitstimes.com.
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the International Criminal Court in The Hague gathered by US intelligence agencies about Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.
But inside the Biden administration, a policy dispute over whether to do so continue to play out behind closed doors. “DOD opposed the legislative change – it passed overwhelmingly – and they are now trying to undermine the letter and spirit of the law,” Mr Graham said. “It seems to me that DOD is the problem child here, and the sooner we can get the information into the hands of the ICC, the better off the world will be.”
The ICC was created two decades ago as a standing venue to investigate war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity under a 1998 treaty called the Rome Statute. In the past, the UN Security Council had established ad hoc tribunals to address atrocities in places such as the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
In 2002, former President George W. Bush essentially withdrew that signature. Congress, for its part, enacted laws in 1999 and 2002 that limited what support the government could provide the court. In 2017, however, the top prosecutor for the court at the time tried to investigate the torture of terrorism detainees during the Bush administration as part of a larger look at the Afghanistan War. In response, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on court personnel, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced it as corrupt.
One was a standalone Bill expanding the jurisdiction of US prosecutors to charge foreigners for war crimes committed abroad.
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