Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday affirmed President Donald Trump’s disdain for the International Criminal Court when he appeared to boast of the White House’s successful bullying effort to stop the court from launching a probe into possible war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Pompeo made the remarks in a “Celebrating Americanism in Our Foreign Policy” speech at the American Legion National Convention in Indianapolis.
“Americanism means taking care of our own,” said Pompeo.
“We stopped international courts from prosecuting our service members,” Pompeo continued, adding that the potential probe “was an outrage.”
In April, the ICC announced that it rejected a probe into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan. Outgoing ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested the investigation in 2017, saying at the time that there was a “reasonable basis to believe” that war crimes were committed by the Taliban, Afghan National Security Forces, U.S. armed forces, and the CIA. That move won the praise of human rights organizations and triggered over one million statements from alleged Afghan victims.
But the potential prosecutions also prompted threats from the White House, with Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, warning of sanctions against ICC officials if they moved ahead with probes into U.S. or Israeli war crimes.
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