On Monday, June 18, the president of the People’s Empowerment Party, Mr David Comissiong, threw down the gauntlet to the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he and a group of Pan-African activists deposited a petition at the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands.
The petition demanded that the political and military leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Canada and Italy be investigated and prosecuted for the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes against the nations and people of Libya, Ivory Coast and Haiti, and against the African American population of the United States.
Mr Comissiong was in that 27-member international delegation that congregated in New York City and travelled to The Netherlands in order to personally deliver to the office of the chief prosecutor of the ICC a massive compilation of evidence on the commission of international crimes arising out of the horrendous NATO military assault on Libya, the illegal French intervention and subversion of President Laurent Gbagbo and the national sovereignty of the Ivory Coast and the 2004 overthrow and kidnapping of President Aristide of Haiti.
The entire venture was coordinated by the New York domiciled December 12th Movement and the International Association Against Torture.
The actual presentation of the accusatory petition was made by the legal duo of Mr Roger Wareham, attorney-at-law and head of the International Secretariat of the December 12th Movement, and Mr Comissiong. Also in attendance were Minister Akbar Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and attorneys-at-law Sylvestre Kouadio (Ivory Coast), Alfred Toussaint (Haiti), and Troy Griffith (United States).
And so, the ICC is finally being put to the test! If there is a scintilla of concern for justice and the rule of law in the ICC, then one would expect United States President Barack Obama, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy and former United States President George W. Bush, along with their key political and military functionaries, to find themselves under criminal investigation and subject to international arrest warrants.
But will the officials of the ICC apply the letter of the law to the leaders of the powerful Western countries that were mainly responsible for setting up the ICC and which also provide the bulk of funding for the court? Only time will tell!
It is, however, worth repeating here the text of the challenge that Mr Comissiong delivered to the ICC: “We wish to warn you, Madam Prosecutor, and by extension the entire ICC, that the eyes of the people of the world are on you. The people of the world have seen you rush to investigate and indict leaders of the African continent on the most flimsy of pretexts.
“They have witnessed the spectacle of the ICC following in the wake of Western-orchestrated destabilization campaigns against African leaders that the West disapproves of, and they have wondered at the connection between the ICC and the said Western powers.”
Of course, this challenge was issued against the background of the startling fact that to date every single one of the ICC’s 26 indictees has been an African, inclusive of such notable African leaders as President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast, President Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, and the late brother-leader Muammar Al Gaddafi of Libya.
• The PEP column represents the views of the People’s Empowerment Party. Email pepbarbados@gmx.com