US accused of blocking evidence of Russian war crimes

 American Defense News:

According to a report by The New York Times, the Department of Defense is blocking the Biden administration from sending evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Netherlands. Military leaders, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, are among those opposed to providing such evidence to the ICC, the international body in charge of prosecuting atrocities and genocide.

Pentagon officials reportedly fear it would create precedent for the court to charge United States citizens, which has stood as a redline for policymakers since the court’s inception. Meanwhile, intelligence agencies, the State Department, and Justice Department have all shown support for evidence sharing.

Atrocity prevention advocates are speaking out, arguing that the Pentagon belied its concerns over the impact of evidence sharing on the prosecution of U.S. citizens, or how the court even operates. Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued in a tweet that the Pentagon was “flouting” the rest of the U.S. government by continuing to block evidence sharing between the Pentagon and ICC.

When the ICC was founded in 1998, the U.S. fought to prevent the prosecution of any citizens in countries that were not a party to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the international court. The U.S. government lost that debate. Since then, any person, regardless of citizenship, who is charged with a war crime in a country that has signed onto the ICC can be investigated and prosecuted by the court, making Sec. Austin’s concerns moot, advocates argue.
...

The ICC recently indicted Putin and others for kidnapping Ukrainian children and taking them to Russia for adoption. 

See, also:

Defiant Putin Visits Mariupol, a City Razed by Russian Forces

The symbolic trip was Vladimir Putin’s first to territory captured by his forces, days after an international court issued a warrant for his arrest.

And:

 UK to help Kazakh exports bypass Russia, seeks critical minerals

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