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March 14th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
But critics say the court is falling well short of the expectations that
greeted its inception in July 2002.
“We are relieved to get to this point, but the prosecutor is woefully
behind schedule,” said William Schabas, professor of international law
at Middlesex University.
“We are still waiting for the big legal judgments of the kind we had at
the Yugoslav, Rwanda and Sierra Leone tribunals,” he added, referring
to the temporary United Nations-created courts that preceded the ICC.
International legal experts however have criticised Mr Moreno Ocampo for only
prosecuting losing parties in conflicts and for focusing on Africa, where
all of its 15 cases are based. The biggest fish among the five men in the
court’s custody is Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast,
charged with crimes against humanity allegedly committed when he refused to
recognise electoral defeat.
“He avoided situations where he would be likely to step on the toes of
permanent members of the Security Council, from Afghanistan to Gaza, to
Iraq, to Colombia,” said Prof Schabas.
Three permanent, veto-holding members of the UN Security Council – the United
States, China and Russia – have not signed up to the court, which was
created by the 1998 Rome Statute, so weakening its clout.
The ICC has been furthermore hampered by legal bureaucracy and political
opposition that has sidelined it during some the worst upheaval of the past
decade.
Toppled dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Col Muammar Gaddafi have faced
summary justice of varying degrees rather than a sober courtroom in Holland.
The court has so far been powerless to intervene in Syria despite the
slaughter of an estimated 7,000 civilians by President Bashar al-Assad’s
forces over the past year. Syria is not a signatory to the court and any
cases relating to it need to be referred by the UN Security Council, where
Damascus has ample diplomatic cover from Moscow and Beijing.
It is also hindered by not having its own police force and by relying on the
goodwill of member states to detain suspects.
The Lubanga verdict will at least remind the world of the court’s existence,
and could well act as a deterrent, said Goran Sluiter, an international
criminal law professor at Amsterdam University.
“Somebody like Bashar al-Assad should be very afraid,” he said. “It
may be safe today and tomorrow, but who knows? Maybe in two or four years’
time if there is a regime change and Syria submits the case, he could be at
the ICC.”
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