Pompeo: US to target ICC to stop war crime investigations

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday that the Trump administration will be releasing a series of announcements against the International Criminal Court (ICC) “in the coming days”, reported The Times of Israel.

“I think that the ICC and the world will see that we are determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC,” he told a podcast hosted by the right-wing American Enterprise Institute think tank.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the announcements we’re going to make in the coming days but I think you’ll see,” he said.

The ICC in the Hague is currently weighing whether to open separate criminal investigations into the “situation in Afghanistan”, which could see UK and US troops tried for war crimes.

In December, the ICC’s office of the prosecutor concluded a five-year preliminary examination of the “situation in the state of Palestine”, concluding there were reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes have been, or are being, committed in the occupied West Bank.

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However, Pompeo has long fought the ICC’s efforts to pursue investigations into cases where Americans or Israelis are involved.

Last month, Pompeo slammed the ICC insisting that it is not qualified to probe possible Israeli crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Pompeo insisted that Palestine is not a sovereign state, so it is not qualified to file a complaint to the ICC against continuous violations and crimes, saying that the ICC’s possible investigation into Israeli crimes is “illegitimate”.