Putin hopes to travel overseas to meet Trump despite arrest warrant for war crimes
Choosing the United Arab Emirates as a venue would mean Putin visiting another country that is not a member of the global court.
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The International Criminal Court in a nutshell
The court was set up in 2002 and aims to hold leaders and senior officials accountable for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. It has 125 member states, but three major global powers — the United States, Russia and China — are not members. Ukraine officially joined the court in January.
More than 900 staff work for the court that has a budget this year of just over 195 million euros ($228 million).
In an indication of the problems it has getting suspects arrested, judges have issued warrants for 61 people and 30 remain at large.
The ICC is a court of last resort, meaning it only takes on cases when other countries' legal systems are unable or unwilling to prosecute suspects.
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The United States and Russia both oppose the court
Trump's administration has slapped sanctions on the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, after Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the ICC. He accuses the court of 'illegitimate and baseless actions' targeting America and Israel. The court has issued an arrest warrant for two top Israeli officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza. They deny the accusations, and Netanyahu has called the warrant 'absurd.'
Trump previously sanctioned Khan's predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, in his first term in the White House and the Biden administration subsequently lifted those sanctions.
Russia also rejects the court's authority and has issued a warrant for Khan and the ICC judge who signed Putin's warrant.
Countries that have not arrested suspects and a notable one that has
It is not just Mongolia that has failed to arrest a suspect wanted by the court. In April, Netanyahu visited Hungary, an ICC member state, and was not arrested. Instead, the Israeli leader received a red-carpet welcome from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who later said his country does not arrest its visiting friends. Hungary is now in the process of leaving the court.
The only other countries to have left are Burundi and the Philippines, whose former president, Rodrigo Duterte, is in custody at the court's cell block in The Hague after he was arrested on charges of crimes against humanity linked to his government's deadly crackdown on drugs.
Duterte was arrested in his home country in March by Philippine police as he arrived on a flight from Hong Kong. President Ferdinand Marcos said the arrest was 'proper and correct' and not an act of political persecution.
South Africa allowed Sudan's then-leader Omar al-Bashir to visit in 2015 without arresting him. Al-Bashir is wanted on charges including genocide for his role in the bloody conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region in the 2000s. He is in prison in his own country but still has not been sent to The Hague, even after being ousted from office in 2019 in a popular uprising.
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ICC prosecutor is on leave amid ethics probe
Karim Khan, the ICC's chief prosecutor, has stepped down pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. He has categorically denied accusations that he tried for more than a year to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship and groped her against her will.
No date has been set for the investigation to be completed.
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The Hill
6 minutes ago
- The Hill
Hegseth subverts Congress by ordering racist Confederate monument's return to Arlington
The verbal gymnastics by our Defense secretary whenever he orders a Confederate monument to go back up is truly Olympian. To wit, Secretary Pete Hegseth just ordered the army to refurbish a 1914 Arlington Confederate Monument to the tune of $10 million and restore it by 2027. Hegseth called it a 'reconciliation monument … taken down by woke lemmings.' In his announcement, Hegseth avoids the actual name of the monument, 'The Arlington Confederate Monument.' In fact, nothing in his statement mentions the Confederacy at all. There's a reason for that: Congress passed a law in 2019 preventing the Department of Defense from naming or renaming anything after the Confederacy. Hence, 'reconciliation monument.' I study Confederate commemoration. This structure is one the cruelest, most racist monuments in the country, and its location at the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery makes it even more offensive. The monument clearly commemorates the Confederacy and its purpose — chattel slavery. It depicts a tearful, overweight enslaved woman, a 'mammy,' cradling the child of her Confederate enslaver, supporting him as he departs for war. The monument portrays faithful slaves and kind white masters, a historical lie. Slavery featured legal rape, torture and selling husband from wife, child from mother. The monument came down because Congress, with a Republican-controlled Senate, passed a law directing the Pentagon 'to remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America.' President Trump vetoed the $800 billion defense bill because it required the changing of nine base names like Fort Lee and Fort Benning that honored Confederates. Those bases were named during World War I and World War II, when the Army and the American South were segregated and few Black southerners could vote. Congress overturned Trump's veto with a supermajority. To execute that order, Congress created a Naming Commission on which I served as vice chair. We were no 'woke lemmings.' The eight commissioners appointed by Congress and the secretary of Defense included three Republicans, one Democrat, and four retired flag officers. When the commission members visited the Confederate monument in 2022, we were shocked by its overt racist imagery and anti U.S. sentiments. We voted unanimously to recommend removal. Hegseth and neo-Confederate groups argue that the Commission sought to 'erase history.' Not quite. Classes still study the Civil War, slavery, the Confederacy, and Jim Crow. Removing the names of bases named after confederate generals or racist monuments changed who and how we commemorate, our remit from Congress, not history. Hegseth further declares that the monument was done in the spirit of reconciliation. He gets his history grossly wrong. Reunion had already occurred in 1868 when President Andrew Johnson magnanimously granted amnesty for treason to all Confederates. By 1877, all the former rebelling states had full political rights and representation. In 1914, the Arlington Monument celebrated not reconciliation, but the victory of white supremacy. Before 1877, over 2,000 Black men held elective office, including a Black U.S. senator from Mississippi. By 1914, even though Mississippi and South Carolina were majority Black, almost no one of color could vote, much less hold office. Jim Crow triumphed. Reconciliation did not include 9 million African Americans in the South who lived in a racial police state without voting rights enforced by a terror campaign of lynching. In 1914, the NAACP's Crisis magazine counted 55 African Americans lynched. In Louisiana, three Black men were burned alive at the stake. Another mob doused a Texas man with gasoline and placed him in an 'oil-soaked, dry-goods box' and set him on fire. None of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. Commemoration should inspire us. Who we commemorate should reflect our values. Instead of spending $10 million to restore that monument, we should commemorate the 1,800 United States Colored Troops and thousands of other U.S. Army Civil War soldiers buried in Arlington who helped destroy chattel slavery, freed 4 million men, women and children from human bondage, protected democracy and the saved the United States of America. By ordering the monument back, Hegseth is subverting Congress and the will of the American people. He is telling us that the values of 1914, white supremacy, and Jim Crow are this country's — and the Army's — values. This monument has everything to do with racism and nothing to do with reconciliation. Suggesting otherwise is a perversion of U.S. history and an insult to everyone buried in Arlington Cemetery. Brigadier General Ty Seidule, U.S. Army (Retired) served as the Vice Chair of the Naming Commission. His is the Hinchcliff Professor of History at Hamilton College and his forthcoming book with Connor Williams is A Promise Delivered: Ten American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases.
The Hill
6 minutes ago
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NATO chief on whether Trump is at risk of rewarding Russia for invading Ukraine: ‘I don't think the risk is there'
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Los Angeles Times
6 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
London rally demands release of hostages in Gaza as Mideast tensions grip U.K.
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'We are united in one clear and urgent demand: the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,' Stop the Hate, a coalition of groups organizing the march, said in a statement. 'Regardless of our diverse political views, this is not a political issue — it is a human one.' The march comes a day after police arrested 532 people at a protest in support of a banned pro-Palestinian organization. The demonstrators on Saturday sought to pressure the government to overturn its decision to ban the group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. Legislation passed last month makes it a crime to publicly support the group. The Metropolitan Police Service said it arrested 522 people for supporting Palestine Action. Ten others were arrested on other charges, including assaults on police officers. The government banned Palestine Action after activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged two tanker planes to protest British support for the war in Gaza. Palestine Action had previously targeted Israeli defense contractors and other sites in Britain that they believe have links with the Israeli military. Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the U.K. in the last month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression. More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading, 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.' That was enough for police to step in. As the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers disagreed over the number of arrests, as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable. 'The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing 'terrorism' offenses, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home,' Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said in a statement. 'This is a major embarrassment to [the government], further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government's own crimes.' London's Metropolitan Police Service rejected that assertion, saying that many of those gathered in the square were onlookers, media members or people who didn't hold placards supporting the group. 'We are confident that anyone who came to Parliament Square today to hold a placard expressing support for Palestine Action was either arrested or is in the process of being arrested,' the police force said in a statement Saturday. On Friday, police said the demonstration was unusual in that the protesters wanted to be arrested in large numbers to place a strain on police and the criminal justice system. The government moved to ban Palestine Action after the activists broke into an air force base in southern England on June 20. The activists sprayed red paint into the engines of two tanker planes at the RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire and caused further damage with crowbars. Supporters of the group are challenging the ban in court, saying the government has gone too far in declaring Palestine Action a terrorist organization. 'Once the meaning of 'terrorism' is separated from campaigns of violence against a civilian population, and extended to include those causing economic damage or embarrassment to the rich, the powerful and the criminal, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning and democracy is dead,' Defend Our Juries said on its website. Though Prime Minister Keir Starmer has angered Israel with plans to recognize a Palestinian state later this year, many Palestinian supporters in Britain criticize the government for not doing enough to end the war in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered Saturday afternoon in central London for a march that ended outside the gates of No. 10 Downing St., the prime minister's official residence and offices. Police are also preparing for protests outside hotels across the U.K. that are being used to house asylum seekers. Protesters and counterprotesters have squared off outside the hotels in recent weeks, with some saying the migrants pose a risk to their communities and others decrying what they see as anti-immigrant racism. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said the scale of the events would 'put pressure' on the police department. 'This is going to be a particularly busy few days in London with many simultaneous protests and events that will require a significant policing presence,' Adelekan said before the protests began. Kirka writes for the Associated Press.
