The verdict could have repercussions on the fate of Swedish prisoners in Iran, including EU diplomat Johan Floderus who has been held for more than 600 days.

Hamid Noury, 62, was arrested at a Stockholm airport in November 2019 after Iranian dissidents in Sweden filed police complaints against him.

In July 2022, a Stockholm district court convicted him of a “serious crime against international law” and “murder”.

The case relates to the killing of at least 5,000 prisoners across Iran, allegedly ordered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, to avenge attacks carried out by exiled opposition group the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) at the end of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.

Sweden has tried Noury under its principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows it to try a case regardless of where the offences took place.

The district court found that Noury had been an assistant prosecutor in a prison near Tehran at the time of the events and had “retrieved prisoners, brought them to the committee and escorted them to the execution site”.

Noury’s defence lawyers have asked the appeals court to acquit him or reduce his sentence.

Hanna Larsson Rampe, one of his lawyers, told AFP the defence would not comment on the case before Tuesday’s ruling.

The Svea Court of Appeal is scheduled to announce the verdict at 2:00 pm (1300 GMT).

– Strained relations –

The lower court trial was the first related to the mass executions in Iran in the 1980s.

It was particularly sensitive, as rights activists accuse senior Iranian officials now in power — including current President Ebrahim Raisi — of having been members of the committees that handed down the death sentences.

Noury’s arrest and sentencing strained relations between Sweden and Iran.

As Noury’s lower court trial was underway in Stockholm in April 2022, Iran arrested Johan Floderus, a Swede working for the EU’s diplomatic service, as he was returning from a trip to Iran with friends.

Floderus’ trial opened in Iran earlier this month, with Tehran accusing the 33-year-old of conspiring with Iran’s arch-enemy Israel and of corruption on earth — one of Iran’s most serious offences which carries a maximum penalty of death.

Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian-Swedish academic, is also imprisoned and under threat of execution after he was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to death on espionage charges.

Iran has previously used detained foreign nationals as bargaining chips to secure the release of its citizens or frozen funds held abroad, including with the United States and Belgium.

– Prisoner swap? –

Swedish media have speculated about the possibility of a prisoner swap between Sweden and Iran.

Mark Klamberg, a professor of international law and senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, stressed that Tuesday’s verdict would likely be appealed to Sweden’s Supreme Court either way and any potential deal would need to await a final ruling.

Klamberg said a prisoner swap could be done two ways.

“The government could pardon Noury… But I don’t think that will happen, it’s politically impossible,” Klamberg told AFP.

More likely, provided Stockholm would want a swap, would be for Sweden and Iran to agree that Noury must serve the rest of his sentence in Iran — which in practice would likely mean that he would be a free man once he returned.

However, Klamberg noted that political considerations would then come into play.

For instance, agreeing could encourage Iran to continue with its policy of taking foreign citizens as hostages to use as bargaining chips, he said.

Another aspect was the reason for putting Noury on trial in the first place.

Klamberg said that for some victims it was important that Noury serve his sentence, while for others it may be just as important the Swedish court actually established in an authoritative manner what had happened in the 1980s, a judgment which is unique in itself.

“I think an important aspect for the Swedish government is how (a prisoner swap) would be received by the victims,” Klamberg said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom has declined to comment on the possibility of a prisoner swap.

Throughout Noury’s two trials, MEK supporters have protested outside the Stockholm courthouses and hundreds were expected to demonstrate when Tuesday’s verdict is announced.

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Salih Mustafa had been found guilty in December of running a makeshift torture centre, where he and his men brutally assaulted fellow ethnic Albanians they accused of spying for Serb forces.

The court upheld his convictions for arbitrary detention, torture and murder but reduced his sentence from 26 years to 22.

“The appeals panel considers that a single sentence of 22 years of imprisonment… reflects the totality of Mr Mustafa’s criminal conduct in this case,” said presiding judge Michele Picard.

However, she also stressed that the reduction in his sentence “in no way suggests that the crimes for which he has been convicted and sentenced are not grave”.

Dressed in a grey suit, Mustafa listened impassively as the verdict was delivered.

Picard said the appeals court had examined cases in Kosovo and internationally concerning “comparable” war crimes. 

In these cases, “shorter sentences were imposed than those imposed on Mr Mustafa”, said the judge.

The 26-year term originally imposed on Mustafa was “out of reasonable proportion with the line of sentences imposed in similar circumstances for similar offences”, she ruled.

– ‘Animal excrement –

Mustafa, 51, was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought an independence war with Serbia in 1998 and 1999.

The court found he had kept detainees in “deplorable conditions unfit for humans” in a barnyard full of animal excrement. 

Prisoners were given “inadequate food and water”, judges said.

They were beaten regularly with baseball bats and hatchet handles, burned with hot candle wax and hot irons, and subjected to electric shocks on their feet.

Mustafa personally interrogated two detainees, subjecting one to a mock execution and beating him “all over his body”.

One victim was left in a “near-to-death” state and denied medical care. 

He was later found dead, with judges saying this mistreatment and lack of aid had contributed to his death.

– ‘Commander Cali’ –

Mustafa’s actions “effectively equalled a decision to kill the murder victim, as at that stage he was denied any chance of survival”, the court judge ruled in December.

Mustafa, also known by his nom de guerre of “Commander Cali”, pleaded not guilty throughout the proceedings at the court, which he compared to a “Gestapo office”, in reference to the Nazi secret police.

In addition to his sentence, Mustafa was ordered to pay 207,000 euros ($223,000) in compensation to his victims. He did not challenge this fine.

Mustafa had told the appeals hearing: “I’m convinced that I did not commit any of the crimes that I was charged with by the prosecution.”

“The prosecution has the evidence, all the evidence, and knows exactly what happened, and it’s not… even that close to the reality that happened,” he added.

His lawyers wanted the convictions quashed or, failing that, a re-trial or a reduction in sentence, which they said was “both capricious and manifestly excessive in all the circumstances”.

– ‘Milestone’ judgement –

The high-security court operates under Kosovo law but is based in the Netherlands to shield witnesses from intimidation in Kosovo, where former KLA commanders still dominate political life.

The December 2022 verdict was hailed as a “milestone” for the court, established in 2015, as it was its first war crimes judgement.

One of the top prosecutors of the initial case, Jack Smith, went on to charge former US President Donald Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.

The court, known formally as the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, is currently running a war crimes trial against former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, who resigned following his indictment.

The Kosovo war, which left 13,000 people dead, ended when Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s forces withdrew after an 11-week NATO bombing campaign.

Although Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, Belgrade does not recognise it and encourages the Serb majority in northern Kosovo to defy Pristina’s authority.

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The centre will investigate and gather evidence for any future trial that could bring Kremlin and Russian military figures to justice for invading their pro-Western neighbour. 

Its aim is to plug a legal gap left by the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) currently has no mandate to prosecute aggression — the core war crime of launching a war against another country.  

The new International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine (ICPA) features prosecutors from Kyiv, the European Union, the United States and the ICC. 

Speaking as the centre opened, Ukraine Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin said a special tribunal for the Russian leadership was now “inevitable”.

“We are gathered here on the occasion of a truly historic moment — I would say an epoch-defining moment,” Andriy told a news conference at the EU judicial office Eurojust, where the ICPA is based.

Kostin said the opening of the centre was a “clear signal that the world is united and unwavering on the path to holding the Russian regime accountable for all its crimes.”

He added that the “crime of aggression is an original sin, the commission of which opened the floodgate for 100,000 other international crimes.”

Kyiv has been pushing for a special tribunal since the discovery of hundreds of bodies after Russian troops withdrew from the town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital in April 2022.

– ‘Unlawful war’ –

International support has grown steadily, and the European Commission then announced the creation of the ICPA in February.

The United States then announced that it would join last month — despite the fact that, like Russia, it is not a member of the ICC.

US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite said justice officials have now handed over the first tranche of evidence to the centre. 

Polite told the news conference that Washington was “proud to stand with our European partners” in prosecuting “Russia’s unlawful war of aggression against the people of Ukraine.” 

The United States also backed a special tribunal for aggression, he added. 

EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said Monday’s launch showed Kyiv’s allies would “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.” 

“We cannot tolerate the gross violation of the prohibition of the use of force,” he told the news conference. 

Calls for a special tribunal on Ukraine have mounted because of the inability to prosecute aggression by the ICC, a war crimes court which is also based in The Hague.

The ICC is probing more specific war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, and issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March over alleged child deportations.

Fundamental questions remain over how a special tribunal would work, when it could be created and who would support it. 

The most likely option appears to be a hybrid court under Ukrainian law with Ukrainian and foreign judges.

But Eurojust chief Ladislav Hamran said it was “not important at this stage… where the trial will happen”.

“As far as investigation of the crime of aggression goes, it’s important that we start now,” he said 

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Former state security service boss Jovica Stanisic, 72, and his deputy Franko Simatovic, 73, were jailed by a UN court for 12 years in June 2021. 

They were convicted of backing a Serb death squad that terrorised the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac in 1992 with killings, rapes and looting.

Stanisic and Simatovic have both challenged their convictions for the war crime of murder and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, forcible transfer and deportation.

Prosecutors have appealed against the pair’s acquittal on several other charges, and asked for a longer sentence. 

The case has been running for two decades, making it the longest and the last at the UN tribunal dealing with crimes from the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia after the fall of communism.

They were cleared at an initial trial in 2013 but the court ordered a retrial.

A five-judge panel at the court, known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT), will hand down its appeal judgment from 11:00am (0900 GMT) Wednesday, it said in a statement.

The MICT has taken over cases left over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which closed in 2017 after bringing key suspects to justice over the Balkans wars.

– ‘Campaign of terror’ –

Suspects including Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic have previously been convicted by the original international court, while Milosevic himself died in custody in The Hague in 2006.

But the case of Stanisic and Simatovic has dragged on far longer.

The two spymasters were arrested in 2003 and acquitted in 2013 after a five-year trial, but the ICTY ordered a retrial in 2015 after a public outcry. 

Judges in 2021 convicted the pair of helping train and deploy Serb forces during the takeover of Bosanski Samac in April 1992.

Serb forces launched a “campaign of terror” to drive out non-Serbs involving rapes, looting and the destruction of religious buildings in the town, judges said.

They also held Bosnian Muslims and Croats in six detention centres were they were subjected to forced labour, repeated beatings, torture, and sometimes killings. 

But judges said there was not enough evidence to prove prosecution claims that Stanisic and Simatovic were part of a concerted plot led by Milosevic to drive out Croats and Bosnian Muslims and create a Serb homeland. 

Lawyers for the defendants say the 2021 judgment failed to show that the pair exerted any control over the Serb forces that brutalised Bosanski Samac.

The Balkans wars left about 130,000 people dead and millions displaced.

Tensions continue to simmer in the region, with clashes erupting on Monday in northern Kosovo between ethnic Serbs and NATO-led peacekeepers.

Former Kosovan president Hashim Thaci is currently on trial for war crimes at a separate tribunal in The Hague.

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For over two decades, Thaci has played a central role on Kosovo’s political scene, making his name during the 1998-1999 war with Serbia as the political leader of the pro-independence ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The tall, silver-haired 54-year-old — who also served more than seven years as prime minister — saw his popularity soar when he helped oversee Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, just three months after winning an election. 

But his image was tarnished by a 2010 Council of Europe report that linked him to organised crime and politically motivated murders of Serb, Albanian and Roma civilians during and after the war.

In the years since, he has also faced accusations of corruption, clientelism and cynical politicking that have blighted Kosovo’s first decade of independence.  

But it was the war-era allegations that abruptly ended his presidency and have seen him spend the past two years waiting behind bars to stand trial. 

Thaci resigned as president of Kosovo in 2020, after a judge in The Hague confirmed an indictment against him for crimes including murder, torture, illegal detention, enforced disappearances and persecution.

“These are not easy moments for me and my family, and for those who have supported and believed in me in the past three decades of our struggle for freedom, independence and nation-building,” he said when he announced his resignation.

– ‘George Washington of Kosovo’ –

Born on April 24, 1968, in the Drenica region of western Kosovo — a hotbed of separatism among Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian community –- Thaci was involved in passive resistance to the Belgrade authorities from the early 1990s as a student.

He later moved to Switzerland, home to a large Albanian diaspora, where he studied history. 

Together with ultra-leftists in the diaspora, he became frustrated by the policy of peaceful opposition to Belgrade’s repression of ethnic Albanians followed by late Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova. 

Instead, he corralled other like-minded ethnic Albanians into an underground guerrilla army, the KLA, to take on the forces of then Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. 

Thaci earned the nom de guerre of “Snake” during the conflict, when he served as the KLA’s political leader. 

More than 13,000 lives, mainly ethnic Albanians, were lost in the war that ended after NATO intervened in 1999, ousting Serb forces and establishing United Nations administration over Kosovo.

Thaci then downed his guns and donned a suit to join politics, leading then US vice president Joe Biden to once hail him as the “George Washington of Kosovo”.

He only won elections in November 2007 after the death the previous year of Rugova, who was regarded as the father of the nation and had proved unbeatable in all post-war polls. 

Three months later, under Thaci’s leadership, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. 

He has since remained at the heart of power in Kosovo, notably becoming president in 2016, despite accusations of corruption from his critics. 

He has always denied any wrongdoing during the war, describing it as a “just” rebellion against Serbian repression. 

“Political mistakes in peace I could have made, but war crimes, never,” he said in 2020, fulfilling his promise that he would “immediately resign” if an indictment against him was confirmed.

“I will not face justice from this office,” he said.

The post Hashim Thaci: Kosovo rebel who swapped guns for politics appeared first on Digital Journal.

The one-time guerrilla hero, who denies the charges, allegedly targeted perceived enemies of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), including Serbs and Roma, as the rebels sought to seize power.

Prosecutors say Thaci, who went by the nickname “Snake” during the war, is jointly responsible for more than 100 murders by the KLA ranging from executions to deaths of mistreated detainees.

The trial of Thaci, 54, and three other men starts at 0700 GMT on Monday and will hear opening statements from the prosecution and lawyers for the victims. Defence lawyers will speak from Tuesday.

They each face six counts of crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes, including murder, torture, forced disappearances, persecution and cruel treatment. 

The other defendants are former KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi, Thaci’s closest political ally Kadri Veseli and key KLA figure Rexhep Selimi. 

Thaci pleaded not guilty at a hearing in 2020. He had resigned as president by that time and handed himself in to the EU-funded Kosovo Specialist Chambers in the Netherlands after he was charged. 

The indictment accuses Thaci and his co-defendants of being “part of a widespread and systematic attack against persons suspected of being opposed to the KLA”, the court said in a statement.

The victims include “hundreds of civilians and persons not taking part in hostilities”. The charges date between March 1998 and September 1999 and involve several locations in Kosovo and northern Albania. 

– ‘Need for justice’ –

Human Rights Watch said the trial highlighted the “ongoing need for justice” nearly a quarter of a century after the war ended.

“It offers a chance after so many years for the victims to learn what happened and highlights the pervasive impunity that still hangs over the Kosovo conflict,” said HRW Europe and Central Asia director Hugh Williamson. 

Thaci’s rebel KLA battled Serb forces for the independence of the southern province in a bitter conflict that claimed more than 13,000 lives.

A NATO air campaign finally forced the Serbs to withdraw. 

After downing his guns Thaci joined politics, leading then US vice president Joe Biden to once hail him as the “George Washington of Kosovo”.

Rebel leaders of the KLA went on to dominate political life in Kosovo.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers was set up in 2015 after a 2010 Council of Europe report linked Thaci to organised crime during and after the war.

In the years since, he has also faced accusations of corruption, clientelism and cynical politicking that blighted Kosovo’s first decade of independence.

The high-security court operates under Kosovo law but is based in the Netherlands to shield witnesses from intimidation in Kosovo.

The tribunal issued its first ever war crimes conviction in December, sentencing former KLA commander Salih Mustafa to 26 years in jail for running a makeshift torture centre.

It has also jailed two Kosovo ex-rebels, Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, for intimidating witnesses. 

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Thaci — a former leader in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) — resigned from the presidency in late 2020 after he was indicted by the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) court. 

Along with three other defendants, Thaci stands accused of an array of crimes including murder, torture and persecution during the 1998-1999 independence war with Serbia. 

The European Union-funded KSC is charged with investigating war crimes allegedly committed by former KLA guerrillas during the bloody insurgency between ethnic Albanian fighters and Serb forces.  

Ahead of the trial, thousands flocked to the “March for Justice” in support of Thaci, where demonstrators waved KLA flags and held signs that read: “Justice not politics” and “Our history cannot be rewritten”.

The rally was organised by the opposition Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), which was founded by Thaci and other guerilla leaders after the war.

“We are with them forever …. and have no doubt that they will return as victors as they once came as liberators because they are living heroes,” PDK leader Memli Krasniqi told the crowd.

The KSC is largely despised by Kosovar Albanians, who believe the court is tarnishing the legacy of the veterans that fought for Kosovo’s independence at great cost.

The charges against Thaci and the others are rooted in the alleged kidnapping and disappearance of at least 100 civilians, mostly Serbs and Roma, along with ethnic Albanian political opponents, according to a 2010 Council of Europe report.

Following the war, Thaci went on to dominate the young nation’s political scene for years, which included stints as president and prime minister. 

In 2008, Thaci’s popularity soared after he helped oversee Kosovo’s independence declaration from Serbia. 

Serbia along with its powerful allies China and Russia have never recognised Kosovo’s independence declaration.   

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Presenting their first report, the high-level team of investigators said they had determined that Russian authorities had committed “a wide range of war crimes” since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — and also warned of possible crimes against humanity.

But Erik Mose, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry (COI), said that so far they “have not found that there has been a genocide within Ukraine”. 

Asked about specific accusations of genocide, including the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to areas under Russian control, Mose said: “We are absolutely aware of these possibilities, and we will pursue this” if the commission’s mandate is prolonged.

The investigators’ report did however conclude that the forced deportations of Ukrainian children “violate international humanitarian law, and amount to a war crime”. 

According to Kyiv, 16,221 Ukrainian children had been deported to Russia as of last month.

The investigators said they could not verify the figures but said they had documented that Russian officials had taken measures to place transferred Ukrainian children in institutions and foster homes, and to give them Russian citizenship.

The report pointed to a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin facilitating the granting of Russian citizenship to some categories of children.

– ‘Pattern of torture’ –

The report emphasised that with few exceptions, “international humanitarian law prohibits the evacuation of children by a party to the armed conflict”. 

The investigators said they had reviewed in detail incidents concerning the transfer of 164 children, aged four to 18, from the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson.

They said parents and children had spoken of youngsters being informed by Russian social services that they would be placed in foster families or adopted, and said children “expressed a profound fear of being permanently separated” from relatives.

The report highlighted numerous other Russian violations in Ukraine that it said amounted to war crimes, including widespread attacks on civilians and infrastructure, killings, torture and rape and other sexual violence.

It also said Moscow could be responsible for the even more serious “crimes against humanity”, pointing to the wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that began last October, and recommended further investigations.

The commission also pointed to a “widespread pattern of torture and inhuman treatment committed by Russian authorities” in areas under their control, including applying electricity to genitals, hanging detainees from ceilings with their hands tied, suffocating with plastic bags, rape and sexual violence.

– ‘Systematic and widespread’ –

“Russian authorities used torture in a systematic and widespread manner,” the report said, indicating that “Russian authorities may have committed torture as crimes against humanity”.

The investigators said they had also tried to determine whether the massive bombing and months-long siege of Ukraine’s southeastern city of Mariupol before it fell to the Russians last May might constitute a crime against humanity.

But without access to the Donetsk region, “it does not have a sufficient basis to make such determination and recommends further investigations”, it said.

The commission was created last year, and the Human Rights Council will decide next month whether to extend its one-year mandate.

For their report, the investigators said they had visited 56 cities, towns and settlements and had inspected sites of destruction, graves, places of detention and torture, as well as weapons remnants.

They said they had interviewed 595 people and consulted documents, photographs, satellite images and videos.

In preliminary findings last September, the investigators had already accused Russia of committing war crimes on a “massive scale” in Ukraine but said it was too soon to prove crimes against humanity.

The investigators said Thursday that they had also documented “a small number” of violations committed by Ukrainian armed forces, including “two incidents that qualify as war crimes,” including the likely use of cluster munitions.

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Nourredine Adam, head of an armed faction of former rebels from the mainly Muslim Seleka group, is wanted over crimes allegedly committed while he was security minister at the time, the ICC said in a statement. 

He is wanted for crimes including torture, imprisonment, persecution, enforced disappearance and cruel treatment at detention centres run by the then-ruling regime, prosecutors said. 

One of the world’s poorest nations, the CAR was plunged into a bloody civil war after a coup in 2013 and while the violence has decreased over the past three years, armed groups still control large swathes of the country.

The warrant was originally issued under seal in January 2019 but ICC judges had now ordered it to be unsealed, the ICC said. 

It identified him as Mahamat Nouradine Adam and said was also known by a series of aliases including Nourreddine Adam.

The ICC decided that the warrant “may be communicated to any state or international organisation for the purposes of its execution”.

Adam is now the leader of the Popular Front for the Rebirth of the Central African Republic (FPRC), a former Seleka militia that is now one of the country’s remaining main rebel groups. 

His group was one of two that last year refused to put down their weapons in response to a ceasefire offer by CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera.

The 2013 coup toppled president Francois Bozize, who seized power a decade earlier. 

The fighting was waged between a coalition of armed groups that overthrew Bozize, the predominantly Muslim Seleka, and militias supporting him, the mainly Christian anti-Balaka.

Adam is already subject to UN sanctions, the arrest warrant says.

Two former Central African warlords, Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom, who led anti-Balaka militias, are currently on trial at the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

The trial of Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, an alleged Seleka commander, also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, is due to open in September.

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Since its founding Rome Statute entered force on July 1, 2002, the world’s only permanent war crimes court has had a poor record of just five convictions.

But The Hague-based ICC remains the court of last resort for grave charges such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression, when member states are unable or unwilling to prosecute.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent ICC investigation into alleged war crimes has made the international community realise the importance of the rule of law, says ICC prosecutor Karim Khan.

“If we don’t hold on to the law today, I think there is very little hope for anybody’s tomorrow,” Khan told AFP in an interview in May.

“That growing realisation has been rendered more acute because of the events of the 24th of February and the events in Ukraine — and I think it’s long overdue.”

The ICC is holding a special 20th anniversary conference on Friday to mark the occasion, with speakers including its current president Piotr Hofmanski and prosecutor Khan.

– ‘Lofty goals’ –

The court says the event is “an occasion for reflections on how well the ICC has met expectations”. 

But those expectations have always been high.

The ICC is the successor to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, when the post-war international order sought an ideal of global justice.

Tribunals into the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the 1994 Rwandan genocide also laid the ground for a permanent court.

The Rome Statute was signed in 1998 and came into effect four years later, allowing the court to finally open its doors.

Yet since then, it has failed to snare any senior government leaders, and its five convictions so far have all been African rebels, including one former child soldier.

“Contemplating the ICC’s legacy in light of its lofty goals, the results are negligible,” Thijs Bouwknegt of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies told AFP.

It had high-profile failures, with former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo being cleared, former DR Congo vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba acquitted on appeal and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta having charges dropped.

Just as damaging is the absence of key players.

The United States, which signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but never ratified it, has sometimes been actively hostile, at one point sanctioning the court over its Afghan probe.

China, Israel, Myanmar and Syria have also steered clear, along with Russia — which even allegedly sent a spy posing as an intern to target the ICC’s Ukraine probe. 

– ‘Recipe for Armageddon’ –

But while there was “deservedly” criticism of the ICC, the court had made a “significant contribution”, said Victoria Kerr of the Hague-based Asser Institute for International and European Law.

“The ICC is not a panacea, nor should its effectiveness be measured solely on its convictions,” Kerr told AFP.

In recent years the court has sought to improve, with new probes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Venezuela and the Philippines.

Ukraine is now where the court has a chance to prove its credentials.

Khan said the recent backing of 43 states for the ICC’s Ukraine probe was “not simply because of what’s happening in Ukraine”.

“When we view international law as an a la carte menu which states can pick and choose from… that is a recipe for Armageddon,” he told AFP.

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