(C) Common Dreams
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Russian Atrocities Prompt Bipartisan Push to Expand U.S. War Crimes Law [1]
['Charlie Savage']
Date: 2022-05-16
The senators are lobbying their caucuses to support the bill, hoping to pass it by unanimous consent and skip the committee review process.
Talks on the topic are less developed in the House, however.
Enacted by Congress in 1996, the War Crimes Act incorporates part of the international laws of war into American domestic law. The act made it a crime, prosecutable by the Justice Department, to commit a “grave breach” of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Grave breaches include willful killing of civilians, torture, biological experiments and “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”
But while similar laws in other countries, like Germany, provide universal jurisdiction over such offenses, Congress in 1996 limited the reach of the United States. The law covers only instances in which an American is the perpetrator or the victim of a war crime.
The bill introduced by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Durbin would eliminate that restriction, making the law cover any situation in which “the offender is present in the United States, regardless of the nationality of the victim or offender.” It would also eliminate any statute of limitations on war crimes, so prosecutions could be brought many years later.
A House committee report in 1996 said that the Pentagon and the State Department had both urged Congress to enact a more universal law along the lines of Mr. Grassley and Mr. Durbin’s bill. But lawmakers decided that would be unwise, worrying that it would create foreign relations issues.
“Domestic prosecution based on universal jurisdiction could draw the United States into conflicts in which this country has no place and where our national interests are slight,” the report said.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/us/senate-bill-war-crimes-ukraine.html
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