THE HAGUE: For a few hours last week, the International Criminal Court looked poised to take a Libyan warlord into custody. Instead, member state Italy sent the head of a notorious network of detention centers back home.
That has left the court without a single trial ahead for the first time since it arrested its first suspect in 2006. And it’s now facing serious external pressure, notably from US President Donald Trump.
Though its docket remains empty, the court still wields an $200 million annual budget and a large number of legal eagles keen to lay their hands on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The lack of trials damages the court’s reputation,” said Danya Chaikel of the International Federation for Human Rights. “The point of the ICC is to investigate and prosecute those most responsible for international crimes.”
Empty courtrooms show how hard it is to end impunity
The only permanent global court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities has not been in this position for almost two decades.
Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga became the first person convicted by court in The Hague. In 2012, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison for conscripting child soldiers.
Since Lubanga’s trial began, the court has had a slow but steady stream of proceedings. To date it has convicted 11 people and three verdicts are pending.
It has issued 32 unsealed arrest warrants. Those suspects range from Netanyahu and Putin to Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and Gamlet Guchmazov, accused of torture in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.
But it faces numerous challenges. Trump, on his first day in office, reinstated an executive order from his previous term sanctioning court staff. A more damaging piece of legislation, which would sanction the court as an institution, has passed one chamber of Congress but is stalled in the Senate for now due to opposition from Democrats.
Putin will probably remain beyond court’s reach
The previous chief prosecutor, Gambian Fatou Bensouda, described being the subject of “thug-style tactics” while she was in office. The court was the victim of a cybersecurity attack in 2023 that left systems offline for months and some technical issues have still not been resolved. In 2022, the Dutch intelligence service said it had foiled a sophisticated attempt by a Russian spy using a false Brazilian identity to work as an intern at the court.
The current prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, has requested a record-breaking 24 arrest warrants. But many suspects — like Putin — will probably remain beyond the reach of the court.
Neither Russia nor Israel are members of the court and do not accept its jurisdiction, making it highly unlikely those countries would extradite their citizens, let alone their leaders, to the ICC.
“They haven’t issued arrest warrants for people who they are likely to arrest,” says Mark Kersten, an international criminal justice expert at University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.
Ultimately, countries are responsible for physically apprehending people and bringing them to The Hague, says Chaikel, whose group oversees nearly 200 human rights organizations worldwide.
Many of the court’s 125 member states are unwilling to arrest suspects for political reasons. Mongolia gave Putin a red-carpet welcome for a state visit last year, ignoring the obligation to apprehend him. South Africa and Kenya refused to arrest former Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir when he visited. The 81-year-old was ousted from power in a coup in 2019 but the authorities in Sudan have still refused to hand him over to the ICC.
Unwanted attention to Italy’s migration policies
Italy claims the ICC warrant for Libyan warlord Ossama Anjiem had procedural errors. He was released this month by an order of Rome’s Court of Appeal. “It was not a government choice,” Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni told reporters.
But Italy, which was a founding member of the court, may have had its own reasons for not executing the warrant. Italy needs the Tripoli government to prevent waves of migrants from setting out on smugglers boats. Any trial in The Hague of the warlord could not only upset that relationship, but also bring unwanted attention to Italy’s migration policies and its support of the Libyan coast guard, which it has financed to prevent migrants from leaving.
On Wednesday, three men who say they were mistreated by Anjiem, also known as Ossama Al-Masri, while in Libyan detention centers told a packed conference in Italy’s lower house of parliament that they want justice for themselves and others who died before making it to Italy.
David Yambio, a South Sudanese migrant who said he had cooperated with the ICC investigation, called Al-Masri’s repatriation “a huge betrayal. A huge disappointment.”
There is little consequence for countries who fail to arrest those wanted by the court. Judges found that South Africa, Kenya and Mongolia failed to uphold their responsibilities but by then, the wanted men had already left.
International Criminal Court has Putin, Netanyahu in its sights, yet its courtrooms are empty
https://arab.news/mj2sj
International Criminal Court has Putin, Netanyahu in its sights, yet its courtrooms are empty
- Though its docket remains empty, the court still wields an $200 million annual budget
- The International Criminal Court has found itself without a single trial ahead for the first time in years
Israel is risking global security, warns Somali Information Minister
- Tel Aviv’s actions boost terror groups he tells Arab News in exclusive interview
- Jama accuses Tel Aviv of wanting to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to region
RIYADH: Israel’s recognition of Somaliland and its presence in the region risks inflaming the situation there, allowing terrorist groups to undermine regional security and stability, according to Somali Information, Culture and Tourism Minister Daud Aweis Jama.
In a special interview with Arab News, Jama insisted that Israel’s unprecedented Dec. 26 move to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state represents a major setback for Mogadishu’s fight against terrorist organizations like Al-Shabab and Daesh.
“The presence of Israel will be used by the terrorist groups to expand their operations in the region. (They will) have a pretext to spread their ideologies in the region,” he said.
“That is another factor that is also risking global security and regional stability, because we have been in the last stage of overcoming the challenges of the terrorist groups Al-Shabab and ISIS,” he added, using another term for Daesh.
Jama added: “We have been putting all our resources and all our time into making sure that we finalize the final stages of the fight against Al-Shabab. So, if something else interrupts us, that means that we are not going to focus fully on the operations against Al-Shabab. And that means we are giving more opportunities to Al-Shabab or other organizations.”
The consequences of this hit to Somalia’s ability to fight terror will not be restricted to the country’s borders, according to Jama, but will spread across the region and beyond.
“This might invite other, external terrorist groups to the region, because they will take advantage of this crisis and will make sure that they take over all the areas that have been defeated before,” the minister said.
“We believe this has come at a time that is going to affect our security as a Somali government, the security of the Horn of Africa, the security of the Gulf of Aden, the security of the Red Sea, the security of the Middle East and global stability. This is a very important location that holds the trade of the world.”
The minister underlined that Israel’s recognition and larger presence in the region are leading to more challenges, “putting more fuel on the ongoing challenges that exist in the region, especially in Somalia.” He added: “And at this time, it is not only limited to Somalia, but it’s going to be a challenge that is going to spread like a fire all over the region and all over the world.”
Jama told Arab News that Israel has other strategic motives for its recognition of Somaliland — including the forced resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza.
“According to reliable sources that our intelligence gathered, one of the conditions that Israel put forward (for recognizing Somaliland) was to have a place that they can settle the people from Gaza,” he said.
“We find that it is a violation also of the people of Palestine, because we believe that the people of Palestine have the right to self-determination. The two-state solution that has been the call of the international community has to be adhered to and implemented.”
Israel’s coalition government, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in its history, includes far-right politicians who advocate the annexation of both Gaza and the West Bank and encouraging Palestinians to leave their homeland.
Somalia’s UN Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman said Security Council members Algeria, Guyana, Sierra Leone and Somalia “unequivocally reject any steps aimed at advancing this objective, including any attempt by Israel to relocate the Palestinian population from Gaza to the northwestern region of Somalia.”
Israel last month became the first country to recognize Somaliland as an independent nation. In the three-plus decades since its self-declaration of independence in 1991, no state had recognized the northwestern territory as being separate from Somalia.
Mogadishu immediately rejected the Israeli move, alongside countries all over the world.
Saudi Arabia affirmed its rejection of any attempts to impose parallel entities that conflict with the unity of Somalia. It also affirmed its support for the legitimate institutions of the Somali state and its keenness to preserve the stability of Somalia and its people.
A group of foreign ministers from Arab and Islamic countries, alongside the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, also firmly rejected Israel’s announcement. In a joint statement, the ministers warned that the move carries “serious repercussions for peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region” and undermines international peace and security.
The 22-member Arab League rejected “any measures arising from this illegitimate recognition aimed at facilitating forced displacement of the Palestinian people or exploiting northern Somali ports to establish military bases,” the organization’s UN Ambassador Maged Abdelfattah Abdelaziz told the UN Security Council.
In the most recent development in Israel-Somaliland relations, less than two weeks after Tel Aviv’s recognition, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited the region on Tuesday to publicly formalize diplomatic relations.
“It was a blatant violation of Somalia’s sovereignty that Israel recognized a region within the Somali Federal Republic as an independent state,” Jama underlined. “That was a total violation of international laws. It was a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Somalia.
“From the beginning, our path was to follow diplomatic efforts. And we kind of started with a successful UN Security Council meeting that supported Somalia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. (This was) followed by other international actors like the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the African Union and regional bodies like the East African Community and IGAD.
“Also, the Peace and Security Council of the African Union has reiterated the importance of supporting Somali sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
