Qaddafi's Real Fear: A War Crimes Trial
Are fears of facing an International Criminal Court trial for human rights violations pushing Qaddafi and his sons to cling to power?
It used to be, in the bad old days of the 20th Century, that when the time came for tin-pot dictators to be replaced, they fled to some accommodating country to live out their days in anonymous exile.
No longer.
With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the UN’s lust to put individuals on trial for war crimes, a tyrant or deposed dictator these days might as well fight back and try to preserve his position rather than risk prison if (when) he’s convicted of war crimes.
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is hardly typical, but it can be guaranteed that if he left quietly, he’d wind up charged with crimes against humanity and go to jail.
Although his nature is probably to fight to death, the spectre of appearing in court in the Hague tips the scales for all sorts of dictators to hold on to the very end.
As a precedent for not surrendering to reality and giving up quietly, one only has to look at the history of some Indian tribes in North America. For example, the Indians of the southwestern United States – like the Comanche and Apache -- were so addicted to torturing their enemies that in battles they preferred to fight to the death rather than surrender and be tortured.
That seems to be Gaddafi and his sons at the moment.
No dictator wants to risk going on trial for war crimes, as was the fate of Slobodan Milosevic who, mercifully for the ICC, died during the trial -- much of which was a fabricated farce.
The U.S./NATO air war against Serbia over Kosovo was ostensibly because of the genocidal policies of Serbia (and Milosevic), which proved to be non-existent. In the aftermath, evidence of atrocities by both sides was found, but no mass graves, which was the excuse to attack.
In the last century when petty dictatorships thrived, individuals like Cuba’s Batista fled to relative comfort when other tyrants, like Fidel Castro, led popular revolutions. Nasser’s coup in Egypt led to King Farouk living in exile in Monaco and Italy.
Uganda’s Idi Amin had sanctuary in Saudi Arabia; “Emperor” Bokassa got refuge in France, but returned to the Central African Republic where he went on trial, was sentenced to death, then was granted amnesty. Ethiopia’s Mengistu got sanctuary from Robert Mugabe. Deposed dictators had a certain immunity until the fad for war crimes trials gained ascendency.
Some tyrants, of course, were assassinated – like Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1961, after 30 years of being “El Jefe.” And Romania’s Nikolae and Elena Ceausescu faced a firing squad in 1989 after 14 years in power.
The United States doesn’t recognize the ICC, realizing that it’s as much (or more) a political and propaganda instrument as an institution for justice. Israel wants no part of it for the same reason. India and China reject its authority.
Which isn’t to say that the people prosecuted are not bad people. No self-respecting democratic country would be willing to allow outsiders to dictate or legislate what is acceptable behavior, and/or to stand in judgment of it.
Canada is one of 34 countries that supports the International Court, primarily because we can’t imagine any Canadian doing anything that would invoke the annoyance of the ICC – unlike the U.S., which has envious enemies eager to belittle or harm the world’s most powerful and humanitarian country, which often makes mistakes in judgment.
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