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The International Criminal Court Broke Its Own Rules

(Telegraph-UK) Sir Michael Ellis - The International Criminal Court (ICC) lost any vestige of legitimacy it may have had by issuing its recent arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The arrest warrant is improper, extra-jurisdictional and illegitimate. The warrant is not only entirely without merit on the evidence, but the very issuance of it was an abasement of the court itself. There is no point funding an institution that doesn't work. Any country which is not a member of the court is simply not bound by it. Israel and the U.S. have never ratified it, ironically largely because they feared bias. But by issuing this warrant the court has chosen to ignore that inconvenient fact as far as Israel is concerned. It's like being forced to follow the dress code of a nightclub when you have no intention of going inside. Even a country which has signed up to the Court can only be pursued by the ICC if that country is unable or unwilling to deal with any credible allegations itself. Israel has a robust and fair legal system, whose courts regularly strike down their own government's decisions. An Arab Israeli Supreme Court judge has even sat in judgment on the country's Jewish prime minister. But the ICC has refused to accept this inconvenient truth as well. Another problem the ICC has ignored is about a Head of Government like Prime Minister Netanyahu having diplomatic immunity, a principle that has been in existence in British statute law since 1709. There are many individuals, in Iran and Syria for example, who deserve the attentions of international law, but a democratically-elected Israeli Prime Minister defending his country from consistent attack from multiple quarters is not one of them. The writer is a former Attorney General for England and Wales.
2024-12-03 00:00:00
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