U.S. to Penalize War Crimes Investigators Looking Into American Troops
The International Criminal Court has collected evidence of what it says is torture, rape and other crimes by American forces during the war in Afghanistan.
By Lara Jakes and Michael Crowley
June 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — International investigators looking into charges of war crimes by Americans in Afghanistan will face economic penalties and travel restrictions, the Trump administration warned on Thursday, accusing a Hague-based court of corruption and maintaining that the United States can prosecute its own military and intelligence personnel.
The sanctions come more than two years after the International Criminal Court announced an inquiry into allegations of crimes against humanity — including torture and rape — by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and at C.I.A. interrogation facilities abroad.

President Trump ordered the new penalties on Wednesday, and dispatched four of his most senior advisers to announce them on Thursday as a rebuke to what the administration described as an affront to American sovereignty, despite the risk of appearing to dismiss attention to possible human rights abuses.

“When our own people do wrong, we lawfully punish those individuals, as rare as they are, who tarnish the reputation of our great U.S. military and our intelligence services,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was flanked at the State Department by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Attorney General William P. Barr and Robert C. O’Brien, the White House national security adviser.
“We hold our own accountable better than the I.C.C. has done for the worst perpetrators of mass criminal atrocities,” Mr. Pompeo said.

The court called the new restrictions “an escalation and an unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law and the court’s judicial proceedings.”


“They are announced with the declared aim of influencing the actions of I.C.C. officials in the context of the court’s independent and objective investigations and impartial judicial proceedings,” the court said a statement. “An attack on the I.C.C. also represents an attack against the interests of victims of atrocity crimes, for many of whom the court represents the last hope for justice.”

Leaders of the American military and the intelligence community have struggled with accusations of battlefield and detainee abuse in the two decades since the Sept. 11 attacks, after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Both wars strained American credibility around the world, stretching the ability of U.S. troops to deploy to combat year after year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/politics/international-criminal-court-troops-trump.amp.html?espv=1

The hypocrisy of the West. He threatened sanction and the so-called ICC started shaking. What a shame!

Need more proof?

Thank God for the internet.one can now search for the truth without depending on only CNN or BBC

The hypocrisy continues

This is US bullying the ICC yet Russia is the bully

Bullies everywhere

You people should go and stop the sanction

any small thing, I will sanction you. Dem don see half of the world finish. Those countries that have suffered injustice in the hand of America should unite to push back so they can take that power of sanctions from them.

Will this make front-page?