I. Interests Shaping the ICC

Despite affirming its objectivity with respect to the Court’s practices and procedures, the ICC has been singled out by critics who claim it is a political organization.5 Possible explanations for this characterization are the institutional and diplomatic limits the ICC operates under. One limit of the Court is that it is funded primarily by member parties and voluntary contributions from the international community.6 The ICC’s very existence depends on the commitment and appeasement of States Parties to the Rome Statute, namely those with more financial resources. Another limit of the ICC is its jurisdictional reach. The Court can only prosecute individuals from States Parties or individuals who have directed atrocities within the jurisdiction of those countries.7 The latter jurisdictional rule has proven to be quite controversial and has garnered sharp criticism from powerful entities like the United States and the United Kingdom (U.K.).8 It has also resulted in the ICC refusing to pursue situations of high gravity that could arguably fall within its jurisdiction but will likely cause pushback due to the principle of complementarity.

Lastly, the ICC is concerned with international perception as a means of maintaining legitimacy. The Court is only as powerful as States Parties perceive it to be and therefore has an interest in being perceived to operate in an objective manner. The success of this goal has been measured against criticism regarding potentially biased case selection.9 Coincidentally, timely changes have been made by the Court in a perceived effort to maintain international judicial order.

The intersection of limited resources, applicability, and appeasement necessarily shape the working structure of the ICC and raise valid concerns as to whether the Court is acting politically. This concern becomes heightened when taking into account existing vagueness in what meets the gravity threshold for case selection and trial. Some ambiguity in laws and treaties are essential for legal interpretation and make way for a fair judicial process. Accused parties must be afforded the opportunity to challenge the accusations made toward them and ambiguities in the law are the means through which they can argue their innocence. However, ambiguities in the Rome Statute are a greater advantage to the ICC because it allows the Court flexibility to navigate international pressures through ambiguous application of the gravity principle.

In 2018 for example, the Court made a sharp change by beginning to investigate non-African countries after it was accused of bias.10 The ICC was accused of inappropriately targeting African countries, which compose the entirety of its convictions.11 The widespread criticism was framed in comparison to many atrocities taking place at the time in Venezuela, Palestine, Colombia, and Afghanistan that were not being considered by the Court.12 Burundi, Gambia, and South Africa threatened to withdraw as States Parties and Burundi ultimately did.13 Shortly after, the ICC made swift changes that included electing Fatou Bensouda from Gambia as the next ICC prosecutor and diversifying the investigations selected. Although the Court has rejected that an African bias existed, its actions signal a timely change in response to criticism from the international community.

The ICC then began investigating Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Palestine, which requires that each situation meet the gravity threshold for selection. Allegations of crimes including rape, torture, political detentions, and extrajudicial executions under President Nicolás Maduro existed while the Court chose to investigate and prosecute predominantly African leaders. The nature of the crimes, their scale, and impact are not markedly different under the current investigation, but the motivations of the ICC are. The Court was facing significant pressure to strengthen its legitimacy to the world especially after the threat of withdrawal from several African States Parties. International perception and possibly funding concerns contextualize the Court’s decision to take on different types of cases.

The means by which the ICC was able to make these changes is through ambiguities in what constitutes gravity. The issue is that the Rome Statute notably does not define what constitutes gravity, and instead the OTP uses a combination of scale, nature, manner, and impact of the crimes for that assessment.14 The questions remain: How many deaths amount to the required scale?; In what manner should a political detention carried out for a war crimes charge?; Is continued taunting enough to count as an act of humiliation that is “outrageous upon personal dignity?”15 Limited successful convictions provide little guidance to answer these questions and the Court’s perceived continued effort toward self-preservation and international legitimacy pave the way for politicized decision making. The following sections illustrate in greater detail interpretations of gravity, wide-spread, and systematic that have resulted in what can be perceived as political choices.

II. Gravity in Case Selection

In alignment with the goals of the ICC, the OTP prioritizes the selection of the most serious cases based on gravity.16 The OTP determines gravity by using four factors: 1) scale of the crimes; 2) their nature; 3) the manner of their commission; and 4) their impact.17 Considerations that can flesh out these factors are the number of people affected and the callousness of the crime. However, because the ICC functions with limited resources, it is unable to investigate and prosecute cases solely on the basis of meeting the criteria for gravity at a superficial level.18 The Court focuses on the most serious crimes within a given situation that concern the international community as a whole—the implication being that the ICC will mainly use resources on the most egregious situations. Even with the added clarity of the OTP’s factors for consideration, there is still significant flexibility with how the Court decides what is a crime worthy of its resources. As evidenced by cases that reveal a sharp change in the application of gravity, the vague nature of the gravity principle avails the Court to make political choices.

A. Mali: Sufficient Gravity for Case Selection

In 2016 for instance, the ICC completed its trial of Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi and convicted him for directing attacks that led to the destruction of ten historical and religious monuments in Timbuktu pursuant to Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute.19 The destroyed shrines included the 16th century mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud and the shrine of Sidi Ahmed ar-Raqqad who wrote about traditional pharmacology in the 17th century.20 Mahdi’s leadership also led to the destruction of a door to the 15th century mosque of the patron saint Sidi Yahia. It was the belief of locals that opening the door would commence the end of the world.21 The shrines and mosque were smashed into by jihadist with the intention of destroying them and of curtailing the influence of the Sufi-influenced form of Islam. Mahdi was an alleged member of Ansar Eddine, a movement associated with the terrorist organization Al Qaeda.22 According to his public statements, Mahdi was also head of Hisbah, and it was part of his mission to combat all acts he viewed to interfere with the precepts of Islam.23 Mahdi’s actions under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(e)(iv) constitute war crimes and require a “plan or policy […] or of a large-scale commission” of a crime.24 These facts contribute to both the selection of the case and the criteria to convict Mahdi. At a surface level, the atrocities committed under the direction of Mahdi constitute war crimes. The desecration of ten religious historical sites can be considered large-scale, and, by his own admission, the actions were part of a policy to narrow the influence of a competing religious faction.

Objectively, a third party could interpret “large-scale” to be the number of targeted religious sites. Ten religious monuments were successfully attacked and destroyed. Another possible framework for scale could tie into the impact prong of the factors contemplated by the OTP. Because the crime targeted valued religious sites of a particular Islamic group, the scale or gravity can be interpreted as a crime against a population on the basis of religion.

The argument can also be made that the Sufi-influenced followers of Islam were spiritually and psychologically affected by the attacks even if they were not physically present, increasing the number and scale for purposes of gravity. The nature and manner of the attack can also be assessed in terms of manner of commission. The monuments were smashed by the perpetrators of the crime, destroying sacred religious artifacts. The act of physically smashing of the monuments is another consideration for the Office.

However, the OTP’s decision to pursue this case in the first place becomes more political when the situation is contextualized. The OTP’s limited resources make it necessary for the ICC to prioritize only the most serious of crimes. This means that the OTP determined that desecration of ten religious monuments and its effects on a religious population, serves the interests of justice and merits the international weight of the ICC more than another situation. The OTP focused on the spiritual impact of the attack on the Sufi-influenced Islam to constitute “large-scale” as opposed to the number of religious historical artifacts affected.25 The facts and application of this case are a stark contrast to previous cases taken by the ICC that directly relate to mass murder, rape, and the enlistment of children into armed forces. These crimes were still being perpetrated around the world, yet the OTP pursued Mahdi.

The OTP in this case made the implicit point that religious matters are not only worthy of review despite limited resources, they can also constitute a greater degree of seriousness than other crimes implicating bodily integrity. The question becomes what metrics are being used to decide that religious attacks require the Court’s intervention over crimes of murder and rape that continue to be referred to the Court?26 The answer to this question is unclear because the metrics are ambiguous.

There is nothing in the Rome Statute or the ICC that declares one crime to be more serious than another. Instead, the decision is based on the needs of the international community. Although social hostilities related to religion increased across 198 countries at the time of Mahdi’s crimes in 2012, they decreased in the following years.27 According to the Pew Research Center, by the time the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mahdi in 2015, social hostilities related to religion decreased to 27 countries from an original 33 in 2012.28 Instead, what increased were religious terrorist attacks that resulted in the deaths of fifty or more people. Assessed under the Pew Research data, the more serious harms affecting the international community numerically were those resulting in the mass death of innocent civilians. However, the ICC chose a different calculous in its interpretation of gravity, valuing the right of religious expression. The gravity of the crime surpassed that of other cases because it affected the right to access and enjoy cultural heritage.

The decision to take on Mahdi’s case and convict him can reasonably be attributed at least in part to a conscious shift in the politics of the Court. Mahdi’s conviction was the first international trial focusing on the destruction of historical and religious monuments.29 What this likely signaled is a change in the ICC’s position to prioritize the protection of religious expression and cultural sites. By doing so, the Court diversified the cases in its record and made a declaration to the international community that other crimes within the Rome Statute are necessary to prosecute. They demonstrated that crimes of desecrating religious monuments are just as important and, in some circumstances, more important than other types of crimes affecting bodily autonomy. This shift was made possible through the ambiguous language of the Rome Statute.

B. U.K.–Iraq: From Insufficient to Sufficient Gravity for Case Selection

The U.K. and Iraq situation was reviewed by the OTP in 2006 and 2014. Both preliminary investigations resulted in closing out the cases based on insufficient gravity and complementarity respectively.30 The issue of gravity however was not overwhelmingly different between the two periods, though it was more detailed. The result was that U.K. forces involved in war crimes were not prosecuted by the ICC. Instead, they were prosecuted internally by the Royal Military Police Special Investigation’s Branch.31 The investigations were widely criticized. Notably no senior British officials have been found criminally accountable to date despite the OTP concluding that sufficient evidence exists amounting to war crimes.32 The fact that the OTP did not investigate the U.K.–Iraq situation further in 2006, resulted in critiques from the international community expressing that a false sense of accountability exists and that there is a double standard for who gets prosecuted by the ICC.33

In February 2006, the OTP closed a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes committed by U.K. military forces between March and May 2003.34 One of the alleged war crimes was the knowingly and clearly excessive attacks on civilians under Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(iv).35 The Iraq Body Count organization estimated that 6,900 civilians were killed between the period in question and other sources estimate that count to be much higher.36 The OTP found these grounds insufficient because evidence did not clearly point to the intentional killing of civilians. There were also allegations of willful killings and inhuman treatment of civilians pursuant to Rome Statute Articles 8(2)(a)(i) and 8(2)(a)(ii). On these allegations, the OTP did find a reasonable basis for concluding that between four to twelve victims were subjected to willful killing or inhuman treatment. These facts do not differ significantly to the 2020 findings detailing that at least seven people were subjected to willful killing from April 2003 to September 2003 and that those actions met the gravity threshold.37 The main difference in the evidence assessed for the 2020 final report are the details of the attacks.

On December 9, 2020 the then OTP Fatou Bensouda closed a preliminary examination into an inquiry on alleged crimes committed by U.K. forces between 2003 to 2009 during the Iraq War.38 The alleged crimes committed by U.K. soldiers include: willful killing, torture, inhuman treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, as well as rape and or other forms of sexual violence pursuant to Article 8 of the Rome Statute.39 In her assessment Bensouda reviewed the crimes in the context of scale, nature, manner of commission, and the impact. Despite affirming that the acts of the British armed forces constituted grave war crimes, the case was not pursued by the Office on the basis of complementarity. The final report states that U.K. authorities were not found to be inactive in pursuing criminal charges.40 The OTP’s refusal to take on the case resulted in significant backlash from the international community that condemned the Court for imposing a double standard in its application of law.41

The 2020 findings were more detailed and implicated slightly more people than 2006 finding of insufficient gravity. According to available information, between March 2003 and July 2009, U.K. armed forces subjected fifty-four detainees to inhuman treatment and torture pursuant to Rome Statute Articles 8(2)(a)(ii) and 8(2)(c)(i).42 The Office found that at least seven people were victims of unlawful killings constituting war crimes. Detainees were also subjected to physical assault, sexual violence, humiliation, hooding, sleep deprivation, food depravation, and forced “stress positioning.” Stress positioning is intended to induce muscle fatigue by requiring detainees to squat with their hands placed on their head for extended periods of time.

One specific example is that of seven Iraqi victims who were detained on the suspicion of looting Camp Breadbasket on May 2003.43 They were forced to simulate oral and anal sex while one man was tied up in a cargo net and then suspended from a forklift truck. The report affirmed that there are no circumstances whatsoever where a State Party may be justified in torture within its jurisdiction. The OTP referred to the manner of commission as “particularly cruel, prolonged, and severe,” noting the killing of Baha Mousa who was hooded for 24 hours and suffered at least ninety-three injuries before succumbing to death.44 Gravity was also satisfied through an impact analysis where the OTP considered short-term and long-term impacts on the physical and mental health of the victims of British war crimes. In addition to permanent physical injuries such as fractured teeth, scars, and the inability to have children, survivors of British torture were also left with post-traumatic stress disorder, amounting to serious impact.

When comparing the details of the 2006 and 2020 investigation, it becomes clear that the sheer numbers were not at face value insurmountably different for a gravity assessment. The four to twelve people who were found to be subjected to inhuman treatment and willful killing in 2006 are not a sharp contrast to the confirmed seven people were found to have been willfully killed by U.K. armed forces in 2020. Moreover, the fifty-four total people who were tortured by British forces do not compare in terms of numbers to the thousands of willful killings committed in other conflicts in States such as Northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur. Yet, that was a justification for not pursuing the U.K.–Iraq conflict in 2006.45 The wholly different application of gravity between two prosecutors raises questions about discretion and political interpretation of the Rome Statute. Although gravity can be colored by the additional evidence presented in 2020, the OTP of 2006 would have likely reached the same conclusion had the Office investigated further. The Office would have been able to investigate the gravity of the inhuman acts that took place in the aftermath of Camp Breadbasket in May 2003.

The refusal of the OTP to continue investigating the U.K.–Iraq conflict after 2020 has led critics to claim that the ICC operates under a double standard.46 They essentially claim that States with a political stronghold are not required to face justice in the same way that States with less leverage do. This is in part because no senior British military or political figures have been charged for willfully disregarding or ordering abuses despite there being evidence of egregious war crimes. Moreover, only one lower ranking solder has faced criminal accountability because many of the cases being investigated domestically have resulted in settlements.47 The prosecutor’s 2020 decision also follows insistence by the U.K. to limit the Court’s budget, a restriction that would impact the Court’s already limited resources. Although there is no definitive evidence that these matters are causally related, the ambiguity of the Rome Statute as well as the Court’s existing limitations make it possible for the OTP and the Court to make decisions that ostensibly favor more powerful States.

III. Gravity in Conviction

The cases that have resulted in successful convictions at the ICC vary in terms of subject matter and gravity. Although the cases fall within crimes against humanity or war crimes, their varied nature has allowed for a flexible interpretation of the Rome Statute for trial and sentencing. During trial the Court reviews whether the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charges presented against them. This includes whether evidence suffices to convict someone of committing a “widespread or systematic attack” under Rome Statute Article 7 or whether a “large-scale commission” of a “plan or policy” has been satisfied pursuant to its Article 8.48 Because there are such few convictions none of which are for genocide under Article 6, there is a limited understanding of what merits a successful conviction for genocide.

Cases that have successfully led to convictions at the ICC include the conviction of Germain Katanga in 2014, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo in 2014, and Jean-Pierre Bemba in 2016. Together these cases encompass crimes against humanity and war crimes. The threshold for what constituted a widespread or systematic attack for the conviction of Katanga was relatively high numerically from what constituted a large-scale commission for the conviction of Dyilo and Bemba.

Katanga was found guilty as an accessory of one count of crime against humanity and four counts of war crimes for the attacks committed against the people of Bogoro.49 The OTP at the time framed the events as widespread and systematic by encompassing a series of attacks led by Lendu and Ngiti militias guided under the leadership of Katanga.50 Ngiti militas hunted and killed approximately 1,200 Hema civilians. On February 2003, Katange and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui’s militia groups composed of adults and children soldiers killed more than 200 civilians in just a few hours, raping women, girls, and the elderly. They also looted the village and forced women to become sexual slaves. As a result of the attacks by Katanga’s militia groups and their allies, 8,000 civilians were killed and more than 600,000 were forced to flee their homes.51 The attack was purposely and knowingly committed under Katanga’s leadership. He boasted that the events were carried out to take revenge on massacres perpetrated by the Hemas in a different village.52

In contrast, the victims of Bemba and Dyilo’s crimes consisted of hundreds of people as opposed to thousands. Before his acquittal in 2018, Bemba was convicted for knowingly letting the army he commanded commit hundreds of rapes and pillages.53 The OTP emphasized that the crime’s seriousness was elevated by the impact on civilians. Innocent women, children, and persons in their home were subjected to these attacks—though an approximate figure is not shared.54 Dyilo was convicted as co-perpetrator for committing the war crime of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 to join the Patriotic Force for the Liberation of Congo.55

Dyilo was convicted for leading the armed group that recruited, trained, and used hundreds of young children as child soldiers to kill, rape, and destroy villages.56 Children as young as nine were forced to become soldiers and commit atrocities against innocent people. The children were abducted after school and while playing with friends and many of them since became severely impacted by the effects of their actions. Similar to Bemba’s conviction, Dyilo was convicted for his crimes against hundreds as opposed to thousands of direct victims.

All the aforementioned crimes are egregious, and they each met the gravity standard required by the Court to proceed to trial and ultimately to conviction. Yet, their differences in scale and commission speak to the discretion of the OTP and the Court in deciding what constitutes a valid case for criminality. If the Court truly only handles the most serious crimes of the utmost importance to the international community, why is there so much variation with respect to gravity? Of the handful of cases that have successfully reached a conviction through the Court, one is for the destruction of religious monuments, others are for the killings, rape, and pillaging of hundreds of innocent civilians, and another relates to the killing and displacement of thousands of civilians.

This range reflects an incredible amount of discretion and signals that there is no uniformity for gravity which avails the Court to arguably make political decisions. The OTP and the Court are within their rights to take agency in these difficult decisions, but that leaves many skeptics concerned that they have interpreted the Rome Statute in a biased or political way. The existing convictions for example, are all for leaders in African countries, which significantly affected the Court’s international legitimacy and strength. This criticism also coincided with the Court’s decision to reevaluate the types of cases it selects.

IV. Conclusion

The ICC is a powerful institution for international justice tasked with prosecuting the most egregious crimes that are of great importance to the international community. Despite the Court’s significant impact, it is bound by several limits that affect its interests and how it operates. Those limits namely include its membership, jurisdiction, and international perception. Under those restrictions, cases are reviewed for gravity at the outset during case selection, then again during trial, and at conviction for sentencing. The vague nature of the gravity principle affords the Court and the OTP significant discretion with respect to what it deems serious enough for trial. The inherent ambiguity in gravity has availed the Court to make decisions that have been perceived as political by critics. An analysis of cases chosen for preliminary examination and cases that reached convictions demonstrates this broad discretion that allows for unequal application and possibly biased decision making.

Endnotes — (click the footnote reference number, or ↩ symbol, to return to location in text).

1. 1.

   About the Court, Int’l Crim. Ct., available online (last visited Dec. 12, 2023); Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, Jul. 17, 1998, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, as amended [hereinafter Rome Statute], available online. ↩

2. 2.

   International Criminal Court, Understanding the International Criminal Court 3 (Mar. 12, 2021), available online, archived. ↩

3. 3.

   Id. ↩

4. 4.

   Id. at 10. ↩

5. 5.

   John Choon Yoo & Ivana Stradner, The ICC Claims to be an Independent Judicial Institution Not Subject to Political Control, However, the ICC is a Political Institution That Promotes Double Standards, ICC Forum (Jan. 8, 2021), available online. ↩

6. 6.

   Understanding the International Criminal Court, supra note 2, at 10. ↩

7. 7.

   Id. at 14. ↩

8. 8.

   Patrick Wintour, UK Government Challenged Over ICC Inquiry Into Israel’s Conduct, The Guardian, Nov. 12, 2023, available online. ↩

9. 9.

   Kamari Maxine Clarke, Is the ICC Targeting Africa Inappropriately or Are There Sound Reasons and Justifications for Why All of the Situations Currently Under Investigation or Prosecution Happen to Be in Africa?, ICC Forum (Mar. 17, 2013), available online. ↩

10. 10.

    Venezuela I, Int’l Crim. Ct., available online (last visited Dec. 12, 2023). ↩

11. 11.

    Clarke, supra note 9. ↩

12. 12.

    Is the ICC Targeting Africa Inappropriately?, ICC Forum (Mar. 17, 2013), available online. ↩

13. 13.

    Franck Kuwonu, ICC: Beyond the Threats of Withdrawal, Afr. Renewal (May 2017), available online. ↩

14. 14.

    Stuart Ford, The Meaning of Gravity at the International Criminal Court: A Survey of Attitudes About the Seriousness of Mass Atrocities, 24 U.C. Davis J. Int’l L. & Pol’y 209 (2018), available online. ↩

15. 15.

    Rome Statute, supra note 1, at Art. 6. ↩

16. 16.

    What is the Universe of Cases Upon Which the ICC Should Focus? What Should Be the Threshold for the Gravity That Warrants Investigation of a Situation or Prosecution of Those Most Responsible?, ICC Forum (Jul. 1, 2021) [hereinafter Gravity Issue], available online. ↩

17. 17.

    Ford, supra note 14, at 10. ↩

18. 18.

    Gravity Issue, supra note 16. ↩

19. 19.

    Al Mahdi Case, Int’l Crim. Ct., available online (last visited Dec. 12, 2023). ↩

20. 20.

    Nicholas Jubber, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi: The Vandal of Timbuktu, BBC News, Sep. 27, 2016, available online. ↩

21. 21.

    Id. ↩

22. 22.

    Id. ↩

23. 23.

    Anissa Barrak, Interview with Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi: “I plead guilty”, UNESCO Courier, Oct. 17, 2017, updated Jun. 9, 2023, available online. ↩

24. 24.

    Rome Statute, supra note 1, at Art. 8. ↩

25. 25.

    Press Release, ICC, ICC Trial Chamber VIII Declares Mr. Al Mahdi Guilty of the War Crime of Attacking Historic and Religious Buildings in Timbuktu and Sentences Him to Nine Years’ Imprisonment (Sep. 27, 2016), available online. ↩

26. 26.

    31 Cases, Int’l Crim. Ct., available online (last visited Dec. 12, 2023). ↩

27. 27.

    Samirah Majumdar & Virginia Villa, Globally, Social Hostilities Related to Religion Decline in 2019, While Government Restrictions Remain at Highest Levels, Pew Research Center (Sep. 30, 2021), available online. ↩

28. 28.

    Id. ↩

29. 29.

    Al Mahdi Case, supra note 19. ↩

30. 30.

    Office of the Prosecutor, ICC, Situation in Iraq/UK: Final Report (Dec. 9, 2020) [hereinafter Iraq/UK Report], available online. ↩

31. 31.

    Id. at 58. ↩

32. 32.

    Id. ↩

33. 33.

    Human Rights Watch, United Kingdom: ICC Prosecutor Ends Scrutiny of Iraq Abuses (Dec. 10, 2020) [hereinafter Iraq Abuses], available online. ↩

34. 34.

    Letter from Luis Moreno Ocampo, ICC Prosecutor, Regarding Situation in Iraq (Feb. 9, 2006), available online. ↩

35. 35.

    Id. at 5. ↩

36. 36.

    Id. at 6. ↩

37. 37.

    Iraq/UK Report, supra note 30, at 31. ↩

38. 38.

    Id. at 4. ↩

39. 39.

    Fatou Bensouda, ICC Prosecutor, Statement on the Conclusion of the Preliminary Examination in the Situation in Iraq/United Kingdom (Dec. 9, 2020), available online. ↩

40. 40.

    Iraq/UK Report, supra note 30, at 101. ↩

41. 41.

    Iraq Abuses, supra note 33. ↩

42. 42.

    Iraq/UK Report, supra note 30, at 4. ↩

43. 43.

    Id. at 36. ↩

44. 44.

    Id. at 52. ↩

45. 45.

    Iraq/UK Report, supra note 30, at 9. ↩

46. 46.

    Iraq Abuses, supra note 33. ↩

47. 47.

    Id. ↩

48. 48.

    Rome Statute, supra note 1, at Art. 8. ↩

49. 49.

    International Criminal Court, Case Information Sheet: The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga, ICC-01/04-01/07 (Jul. 2021), available online (last visited Dec. 11, 2023). ↩

50. 50.

    The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, ICC-01/04-01/07, Prosecutor’s Opening Statement, 11 (Nov. 24, 2009), available online. ↩

51. 51.

    Id. at 11. ↩

52. 52.

    Id. at 7. ↩

53. 53.

    The Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, ICC-01/05-01/08, Prosecutor’s Opening Statement, 3 (Nov. 22, 2010), available online, archived. ↩

54. 54.

    Wairagala Wakabi, Prosecution’s Opening Statement in Bemba Trial, Int’l Just. Monitor (Dec. 15, 2010), available online. ↩

55. 55.

    International Criminal Court, ICC-01/04-01/06, Case Information Sheet: The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (Jul. 2021), available online (last visited Dec. 12, 2023). ↩

56. 56.

    Wakabi, supra note 54. ↩