This will almost certainly never happen. The Post spoke by phone with George Andreopoulos, professor of political science and criminal justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and director of the Center for International Human Rights at the college, who explained how international law and the international courts would work.
The International Criminal Court is the only international venue that could try an American for his or her actions in the CIA’s interrogation program. There are territorial and temporary courts — the tribunals dealing with Yugoslavia or Rwanda, for example — but only the ICC is poised to take action if an individual country won’t. That’s key: The ICC has “complementary” jurisdiction, meaning that it will step in only if a local or national court is unable or unwilling to do so.
What’s more, it only has jurisdiction for crimes in countries that are signatories to the 1998 Rome Statute that established the ICC. Afghanistan, where many of the CIA’s actions occurred, is a signatory, as are Lithuania and Romania which were sites of other CIA prisons. If any of those countries chose to charge CIA agents — or Bush administration officials, as Emmerson suggests — they could do so. Or they could refer cases to the ICC, which would determine if any defendants would face war crimes charges (if the actions were considered to be part of a military conflict) or charges of crimes against humanity.
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