'War crimes of torture': ICC Prosecutor Signals Charges Against US Armed Forces, CIA
The US may have committed war crimes of torture, cruel treatment and rape, when it interrogate dozens of people in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said.
The International Criminal Court's preliminary probe of the US armed forces and CIA activities in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2004 shows there to be a “reasonable basis to believe that, in the course of interrogating these detainees … members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape,” chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said, according to the AFP.
Between May 2003 and the end of 2014 in Afghanistan, at least 61 detained persons "appear" to have been subjected to torture, cruelty and "outrages upon personal dignity," while under control of US armed forces, the report says.
The report found that the CIA subjected "at least 27 detained persons" to rape, torture, cruelty or outrages upon personal dignity, while in Afghanistan "and other States Parties to the Statute (namely Poland, Romania and Lithuania) between December 2002 and March 2008." Most of the alleged abuses took place between 2003 and 2004, the report finds.
Should formal charges be filed, Washington may be found in violation of several "war crimes" provisions of Article 8 of the ICC Rome Statute.
