The United States government has apparently failed to provide compensation or other redress to Iraqis who suffered torture and other abuse two decades after evidence emerged of US forces mistreating detainees at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prisons in Iraq.
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The Declaration of Independence cataloged the ways in which King George III infringed upon American liberties. Among King George’s offenses listed in the Declaration was “Transporting us beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended Offences.” The king claimed the authority to seize American colonists and force them to stand trial in Great Britain for criminal offenses allegedly committed in America.
Almost 250 years later, another foreign tribunal the International Criminal Court (ICC), located in The Hague in the Netherlands is working toward issuing arrest warrants for American citizens for allegedly abusing detainees in Afghanistan. The court is pursuing this course despite the fact that the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and therefore not subject to the ICC’s jurisdiction.