Though its docket remains empty, the court still wields an $200 million annual budget
\n THE HAGUE
\nFor 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.
\nThat has left the court without a single trial ahead for the first time since it arrested its first suspect in 2006. And it\u2019s now facing serious external pressure, notably from US President Donald Trump.
\nThough 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.
\n\u201cThe lack of trials damages the court\u2019s reputation,\u201d said Danya Chaikel of the International Federation for Human Rights. \u201cThe point of the ICC is to investigate and prosecute those most responsible for international crimes.\u201d
\nEmpty courtrooms show how hard it is to end impunity
\nThe only permanent global court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world\u2019s 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.
\nSince Lubanga\u2019s 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.
\nIt has issued 32 unsealed arrest warrants. Those suspects range from Netanyahu and Putin to Lord\u2019s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and Gamlet Guchmazov, accused of torture in the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia.
\nBut 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.
\nPutin will probably remain beyond court\u2019s reach
\nThe previous chief prosecutor, Gambian Fatou Bensouda, described being the subject of \u201cthug-style tactics\u201d 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.
\nThe current prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, has requested a record-breaking 24 arrest warrants. But many suspects \u2014 like Putin \u2014 will probably remain beyond the reach of the court.
\nNeither 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.
\n\u201cThey haven\u2019t issued arrest warrants for people who they are likely to arrest,\u201d says Mark Kersten, an international criminal justice expert at University of the Fraser Valley in Canada.
\nUltimately, countries are responsible for physically apprehending people and bringing them to The Hague, says Chaikel, whose group oversees nearly 200 human rights organizations worldwide.
\nMany of the court\u2019s 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.
\nUnwanted attention to Italy\u2019s migration policies
\nItaly claims the ICC warrant for Libyan warlord Ossama Anjiem had procedural errors. He was released this month by an order of Rome\u2019s Court of Appeal. \u201cIt was not a government choice,\u201d Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni told reporters.
\nBut 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\u2019s migration policies and its support of the Libyan coast guard, which it has financed to prevent migrants from leaving.
\nOn 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\u2019s lower house of parliament that they want justice for themselves and others who died before making it to Italy.
\nDavid Yambio, a South Sudanese migrant who said he had cooperated with the ICC investigation, called Al-Masri\u2019s repatriation \u201ca huge betrayal. A huge disappointment.\u201d
\nThere 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though its docket remains empty, the court still wields an $200 million annual budget 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-458635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n