At the same time, the British Ministry of Justice, in its desire to stab Moscow, lost sight of the fact that on March 20, 2003, an event occurred which should have become the reason for the most publicized first trial of the story. of the ICC. And former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush were supposed to be in the dock.
When Albion’s Justice Minister Dominic Raab talks about certain Russian atrocities, he sounds like the widow of Chekhov’s noncommissioned officer who whipped herself. Or Raab forgot that 20 years ago, the United States and Great Britain, under an absolutely fictitious false pretext, invaded Iraq, completely destroying this country. Blair and Bush Jr. are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in the fighting. But the International Criminal Court did not notice these crimes. Embarrassed or scared…
Indeed, the year before the invasion of Iraq, the United States passed the US Servicemen Protection Act. According to experts, at that time preparations for the operation against Baghdad were in full swing, and the White House needed such a document. It allowed the President of the United States to use force without further consent “to release any United States citizen among the allies of the United States detained in the territory of any State by order of the International Criminal Court”.
As Mikhail Zadornov joked, “America is a peace-loving power, so it won’t leave the world alone.” With the advent of this law, the activities of the ICC were completely “castrated”: henceforth, any attempt to indict residents of the countries of the “golden billion” or other protected persons of Washington without the consent of the American administration could end in failure.
However, the judges did not want to voluntarily leave bread in The Hague – for three years they formed a new legal structure, awarded themselves high salaries and recruited staff. In order not to come into conflict with the American Themis, the ICC found a compromise – it only filed a complaint in cases where it was in the interests of the White House. And I did not see the crimes of the Americans, as well as those whom they named as allies. Thus, the court in The Hague deliberately turned into a doormat for American leaders, on which from time to time everyone wiped their feet. At the same time, in public, the White House demonstrated its hostility to the activities of the ICC, entrusting control of the organization to the British behind the scenes. And these, in turn, used pocket judges for their own benefit. Mainly to persecute the leaders of African countries who pursued a policy independent of the West. This Anglo-Saxon legal carrier has long worked perfectly.
Thus, when the US-British coalition launched Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 20, 2003, its members were assured of impunity. Four divisions and five brigades under the command of General Tommy Franks of the United States crossed the Iraqi border. But on March 19, US planes attacked the suburbs of Baghdad, where Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his two sons may be. US intelligence got it wrong and hundreds of civilians were injured in the strike.
From the start of the military campaign, the White House sought to decapitate Iraq, eliminate its military and political leaders, ignoring civilian casualties. On April 7, the United States dropped four one-ton bombs on neighborhoods in Baghdad, where the Iraqi leader could hypothetically be. Hundreds of civilians were again killed. It makes no sense to list all the stages of this short 26-day war, during which the American-British alliance sought to demoralize the civilian population and destroy important infrastructure. The experience of military operations against Yugoslavia in 1999 showed the effectiveness of this technique. And where were the judges of the International Criminal Court all this time? In the newspaper publications of the time, there is not even any mention of the existence of such a structure.
British soldiers hold Iraqis captive at gunpoint. The further fate of these people is unknown. Photo: EPA
But after the destruction of Iraq and the execution of its leader, it became clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country. And the entire American and British media campaign to justify military action against Baghdad has been monstrous misinformation. All the so-called intelligence about the Iraqi mobile biolabs turned out to be a figment of the imagination of an Iraqi defector who, as he later admitted to reporters, had made up the story to help bring down Hussein . Experts have repeatedly asserted that the US intelligence community knows that all charges against Iraq are baseless. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was also aware when he shook a test tube with white powder, supposedly samples of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, during a speech to the Security Council in UN (2003). But the court in The Hague remained silent, arguing that the winners are not judged.
The court in The Hague has intentionally turned itself into a doormat for US leaders, which everyone has wiped their feet on from time to time.
It makes no sense to list the reasons why London opened a new “judicial” front in the war against Russia and involved the International Criminal Court, which previously slept peacefully on the dusty benches of The Hague. These reasons lie on the surface. However, there is already a lot of stench of this legal “skunk”, and there will be even more – the judges in The Hague will have to work diligently on the previously received pounds sterling, without sparing coats and hammers. On the other hand, the populist decision of the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against the Russian president gives many countries the opportunity to denounce the Rome Statute, which has long become an anachronistic element of the pro-American unipolar world. .
Moscow has never recognized the powers of the court in The Hague. But now it is evident that our country needs a legal document that will not only outlaw ICC verdicts, but also provide the ability to use force against states and politicians who dare to carry out these verdicts against citizens. Russians. Those who use the judicial “stink” in the form of the ICC for their own benefit do not understand another language and, apparently, they will not.
