On Sun, 06 Jul 2003 05:53:15 GMT, (Charles Hawtrey)
wrote:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 23:00:53 +0200, Torsten Brinch
wrote:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 17:11:32 GMT, (Charles Hawtrey)
wrote:

The ICC is noble in principle but unworkable in practice. The guilty
can easily evade justice by having sham trials in their own countries,
while well-meaning peacekeepers will be subject to an endless
annoyance of frivolous prosecutions.

No, that's a misunderstanding. The ICC was set up exactly to avoid
that kind of impunity, by giving the ICC the ultimate jurisdiction.

Have you actually read the relevant part of the Rome Statute?

Yes of course.

The bar
for "ultimate jurisdiction" as you call it is set so high that it is
effectively useful only when the case of a state with no central
government.

You write this as if anyone bothering to read the statute will
realise that in cases of states with a central government,
the ICC has effectively no ways of exercising its ultimate
jurisdiction. I can't read it that way.

A state that wishes to shield violators can easily do so
by setting up a sham trial that follows the formalities of its legal
system. Theoretically the trial could be declared a sham, but in
practice the shielding state can easily avoid this by making a good
show.

And it is easy to set up a good show, you would say, eh? :-)

Few would be so naive as to conduct a transparently obvious
sham trial.

True. There would need to be put a whole lot more hard
effort into it.