KAMALIKA PIERIS

During the course of   its various wars, United States   has committed crimes that seriously violate international law,    announced China. They include war crimes, crimes against humanity, arbitrary detention, and torture of prisoners.

American aggressiveness over the past decade has an absolutely criminal character, agreed other analysts. The US has the worst history of war crimes in the world they said. US has had a horrifying record of human rights abuses added others.

US is guilty of dropping bombs on innocent targets. It excelled in aerial bombardments, said Stearns.   US dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  US continued to drop bombs thereafter. US has dropped over 3000 tons of depleted uranium through its bombs.

There is a long list of bombing, from Nagasaki, to   Guatemala, Korea, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo, Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia,  Libya, Nicaragua, Iran, Bosnia, Sudan  and Afghanistan, said Shenali Waduge.

In 1971, 800,000 tons of bombs were dropped by the United States on Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.  In 1973 US sent B-52s over Hanoi and Haiphong, destroying homes and hospitals, killing unknown numbers of civilians.

From 2001 to 2017, bombs and missiles have rained down on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iran, said critics. In 2011, US dropped bombs on at least 100 targets in Libya.America has conducted 108 air strikes in Somalia since 2017, killing some 800 people, said Economist. In 2019, US had an air strike in Iraq against Iranian militia, which killed 25 and injured over 50. 

A United Nations report released in September 2019 noted that many of the airstrikes carried out by the U.S.-led coalition in places like Syria “did not take the necessary precautions to distinguish between military targets and civilians.” United States has widely used air strikes to carry out so-called “anti-terrorism” operations, which often killed civilians “by mistake,” injured innocent people, and arbitrarily deprived them of the right to life, said China.

US sold weapons in large quantities, to its proxies in the Middle East and they used them indiscriminately causing large-scale humanitarian disasters. The US army was also guilty of killing civilians.

In Iraq at Mahmudiyah in 2006 two daughters, 14 years oldAbeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and were murdered by US soldiers. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed were at school during the massacre and were orphaned by the event.

In Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2012, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales killed 16 Afghan civilians and wounded six others in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. Nine of the victims were children, and eleven of the dead were from the same family.

US army had been found guilty of rape. Wikipedia said that U.S. military personnel raped Okinawan women during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

In Iraq in , 2006, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi was raped and subsequently murdered in the family home in Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq.  Five soldiers from the 502nd Infantry Regiment were charged with rape and murder.

In 2006, Congress found that CIA had engaged in widespread torture. There has been torture of inmates in secret US prisons. In 2003, the U.S. military, in serious violation of international human rights law, blatantly abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A group of soldiers committed a series of human rights violations including physical and sexual abuse against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison. 

The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.

United States established Guantanamo Bay detention camp (est.2002) to lock up a total of nearly 780 “terrorists” from the Middle East and elsewhere total, many of whom have been held without bringing any criminal charge. More than 30 people, old and frail, remain in the prison, who are deprived of liberty for long periods of time and subjected to endless mental and physical torture. USA admitted before the UN Committee against Torture that they had ‘crossed the line’ at its CIA site at Guantanamo, reported the media.

In Guantanamo, U.S. personnel also harassed its Muslim prisoners, by desecrating the Quran throwing the Quran into toilets, tearing to pieces or burning the Quran under the guise of searching for weapons, and having female guards spy on naked prisoners in bathrooms, which sparked collective protests and even caused mass suicides among the detainees.

In September 2021, the U.S. prison and prisoner abuse practices at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan were exposed by the media. U.S. forces inflicted “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual abuse” on detainees for a long time, including putting at least 30 prisoners in a cage, leaving tortured prisoners to die in concealed areas, parading naked prisoners with blindfolds, among others.

War crimes charges were made against the USA troops in Afghanistan, reported BBC. The US armed forces and the CIA are alleged to have committed the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and rape and other forms of sexual violence in Afghanistan.

The ICC Prosecutor alleges that members of the US armed forces and the CIA had used the following torture techniques against detainees – incommunicado detention and prolonged and continuous solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, sensory overstimulation,  exposure to extreme heat or cold, exploitation of phobias and cultural, religious and sexual taboos, sexual humiliation or insults, offensive use of items of religious significance, imposition of stress positions designed to induce muscle fatigue, suspension from the ceiling, food deprivation, slamming against a wall, cramped or close confinement by placing detainees in boxes, sexual violence, including by means of rectal rehydration or rectal feeding applied with excessive force; and suffocation by water, or the practice of water boarding, placing of detainees in icy water baths.

In November 2017, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) had requested authorization from the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC to initiate an investigation into allegations of war crimes committed by the USA in Afghanistan since 2003. This was initially rejected.

The Prosecutor filed an appeal against that decision.  On 5 March 2020, the Appeals Chamber of the ICC decided unanimously to authorize the investigation against the USA. An investigation of alleged war crimes by the US and others in the Afghan conflict can go ahead, ruled the ICC.

 ICC chief prosecutor said that US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan, as a deliberate policy, She spoke of war crimes of torture and related ill treatment by US military forces in Afghanistan and secret detention facilities operated by the CIA. This ICC war crimes probe against the USA had been in the pipeline for more than two years, observed critics in 2020.

Attempts to investigate these crimes were blocked by the US.  US said it was not a signatory to the Rome Statute and could not be investigated without a UN Security Council order or consent of USA.

Though USA is not a member of the ICC and therefore does not come under its jurisdiction, Afghanistan is a member of ICC and any crime conducted on its territory can be brought to the ICC regardless of the nationality of its perpetrator, said ICC. Afghanistan joined the ICC in 2003 and it is on this basis that the ICC has claimed jurisdiction over deeds alleged to have been committed in Afghanistan by US armed forces and the CIA, said the media.

 The US establishment has reacted sharply to the initiative of the ICC Prosecutor. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in 2019 that they are determined to protect American and allied military and civilian personnel ‘from living in fear of unjust prosecution’ for actions taken to protect America. If the ICC persists in this course of action, they will impose travel bans on judges and personnel of the ICC and will also take further steps like economic sanctions. President Trump said that any attempt to target American, Israeli or allied personnel for prosecution by the ICC will be met with ‘a swift and vigorous response’.

US armed forces have committed war crimes, as defined in the ICC and Geneva conventions, in the various US wars. But USA has made sure that it cannot be prosecuted. The main agency dealing with war crimes was the International Criminal Court (ICC). The US is not a signatory of the ICC and does not recognize its authority over American citizens.

US went out of its way to protect its military personnel accused of committing war atrocities. USA signed some 100 bilateral immunity agreements with a number of countries, prohibiting the surrender to the ICC of officials, military personnel and US employees US also threatened to veto UN peacekeeping mission unless its troops were granted immunity from prosecution by the ICC. No American has been indicted in ICC, said TIME.

In 2002, USA passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act which was specifically aimed at the International Criminal Court. It prohibits any U.S. citizen or institution from cooperating with the International Criminal Court and prohibits the transfer of U.S. classified national security and law enforcement information to that court. It even bans the provision of U.S. military assistance, (with specified exceptions) to the government of a country that is a party to the court.

The American Service-Members’ Protection Act authorizes the President to bring about the release from captivity of any U.S. military personnel or covered allied persons who are being detained or imprisoned by or on behalf of the ICC and authorizes the US President to use all means necessary to do so. The phrase ‘use all means necessary’ enables the US government to resort to force to obtain the release of a US citizen or an ally who happens to be in the custody of the ICC. It authorizes military force to free military personnel held by ICC, observed critics. 

The US Congress has also passed two other laws relating to this matter, the Foreign Operations Act and the Patriot Act.  U.S. government, the U.S. judiciary, and American citizens are strictly prohibited from cooperating in any international investigation into the US Armed Forces. American citizens are subject to severe penalties if they directly or indirectly accuse the US Armed Forces. Ambassador John Bolton, who represented the United States at the United Nations, has stated that any officer of the International Criminal Court will be directly imprisoned if he or she investigates the US Armed Forces.