(Times of Israel) Avi Bell - The Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court, for the first time in its history, has ordered the ICC Prosecutor to pursue an investigation she has decided to close. The Chamber ruled that the Prosecutor was wrong to close the preliminary investigation into war crimes charges against Israel for the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident of 2010. The ruling holds that the Prosecutor should assume the truth of even the wildest accusations in deciding whether to bring charges; in other words, there should be an irrebuttable presumption of guilt in the preliminary investigation stage. And it holds that crimes have sufficient gravity to interest the court, even if they have very few actual victims, as long as they are widely covered by the media, and are subject to a lot of political activity at the UN. It's a safe bet that these "rules" will never be applied to any non-Jewish, non-Israeli defendant. The ICC will earn its reputation as another failed hope for international law, and another embarrassing institution devoted to persecuting the Jewish state. And Israeli Jews will once again find themselves in a world where it is criminal simply to exist, and where stepping foot in the wrong country means instant arrest. The writer is a professor at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law and the University of San Diego Law School.
2015-07-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive