The International Criminal Court seems to think that Canadian officials may be complicit in war crimes over the Afghan detainees:
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says in a documentary soon to be aired on TVO that Canadian officials are not immune to prosecution if there is evidence that crimes were committed by handing over detainees to face torture.
When Toronto filmmaker Barry Stevens asked Moreno-Ocampo in his film, Prosecutor, if the ICC would pursue a country like Canada over its role in Afghanistan, he replied:
“We’ll check if there are crimes and also we’ll check if a Canadian judge is doing a case or not . . . if they don’t, the court has to intervene. That’s the rule, that’s the system, one standard for everyone.”
Moreno-Ocampo could not be reached for further comment about the case Thursday when attempts were made by the Star.
Update: Adrian MacNair is underwhelmed:
As one who has actually been to Afghanistan and seen how the military cares for and treats detainees, it’s a little difficult to swallow the news that the International Criminal Court could investigate Canada for so-called war crimes. I’m not sure what that would accomplish, but it certainly would do nothing to help with the main problem in the country: the insurgency.
I’m unsure as to how or why anybody believes that Canada’s role in Afghanistan is anything more than a humanitarian mission buttressed by security. We’re in the country to provide stabilization for the democratically elected (though admittedly corrupt and fraudulent) government with whom we have specific agreements and rules we must follow.
In providing security to Afghans we are not allowed to hold Afghan nationals for more than 96 hours in our custody, though at the time of the allegations (pre-2007) this was 72 or 48 hours.
It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to expect a foreign military with finite resources to ensure absolute humanitarian oversight of detainees after they’ve been handed over to the Afghan government. That’s like expecting a police officer in Canada to ensure proper oversight of a prisoner he has arrested and brought to justice. Is a police officer morally culpable if a prisoner is raped in prison?
Canada (and NATO) is in Afghanistan out of self interest, as justified by Article 5 of the NATO Charter, and subsequently “authorized” by UN Security Council Resolution 1386. Humanitarian interest never came into it. The authorization by the UN Security Council means that the legal cover for NATO includes the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 regarding prisoners of war, as set out in the Bulletin of the UN Secretary General on August 12, 1999, which is exactly 50 years after G3 was signed. Grave breaches of international humanitarian law are set out in the Statute of Rome (that Canada has also signed) and codified in the Crimes Against Humanities and War Crimes Act of 2000, which includes unlawful transfer.
It is Canadian law that all such possible breaches be pursued in Canada, and if not, the ICC. It’s the law, not a matter of opinion.
Comment by Neil Kitson — May 3, 2011 @ 04:15