- THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The
world's first permanent war crimes court swore in its first 18 judges Tuesday
to try the 21st century's worst crimes in a move hailed as the biggest
legal milestone since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg.
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- Amid pomp and ceremony, the judges at the International
Criminal Court, or ICC, 11 men and seven women, were sworn in to try people
accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
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- But even as the judges -- from Samoa and Latvia, from
South Africa, Brazil, Britain and France -- took their oaths, there were
concerns the court would struggle to flex its muscle in the face of opposition
from the United States, China and Russia.
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- "By the solemn undertaking they have given here
in open court, these eleven men and seven women, representing all regions
of the world and many different cultures, have made themselves the embodiment
of our collective consciences," U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
said.
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- Some 89 countries have thrown their weight behind the
court to try alleged perpetrators who committed crimes after it came into
being in July 2002. But lack of support from the United States and Russia
-- two powers behind the Nuremberg Trials -- has been a setback.
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- Support for the ICC -- a descendant of Nuremberg and
Tokyo war crimes trials after World War II -- was given added impetus by
ad hoc U.N. war crimes tribunals set up to try crimes in the Balkans in
the 1990s and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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- "The court which we have created, and in which we
install judges today, responds to one of the darkest parts of our human
experience, and yet this is also a ceremony of hope," said Jordan's
Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, head of the assembly of states who backed
the Rome Statute in 1998 to set up the ICC.
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- WORLD JUDICIAL CAPITAL
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- The ICC takes its seat in The Hague -- dubbed the world's
legal capital -- alongside the U.N. war crimes tribunal trying ex-Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and the U.N.'s World Court, which only rules
on disputes between states.
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- The United States, Russia and China -- three of the five
permanent members of the 15-seat U.N. Security Council -- have shunned
the court with Washington leading a dogged campaign to ensure it does not
try to prosecute U.S. citizens.
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- Fearing U.S. troops could face politically motivated
prosecutions, Washington strongly opposes the ICC and declined an invitation
to join Annan for the ceremony.
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- The United States, which has withdrawn its signature
from the 1998 treaty that set up the ICC, has been busy persuading other
countries to seal bilateral agreements exempting all U.S. citizens from
the court's authority.
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- The court's supporters said the dispute would not remove
the symbolism of the inauguration hosted by Dutch head of state Queen Beatrix.
The European Union, a staunch advocate for the court, also welcomed its
becoming a reality.
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- "The court sends a powerful message to any potential
perpetrator of such crimes: impunity has ended," said EU External
Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
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- Anyone -- from a head of state to an ordinary citizen
-- will be liable to ICC prosecution for human rights violations, including
systematic murder, torture, rape and sexual slavery. But it is still some
way off being ready for its first case.
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- The court officially opened in The Hague last year after
60 states backed it, but with just a skeleton administrative staff.
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- Benjamin Ferencz, 82, a former U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg
at the ceremony, lamented Washington's stance. "The current leadership
in the United States seems to have forgotten the lessons we tried to teach
the rest of the world," he said.
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- The ICC's first judges were elected in New York earlier
this year. A prosecutor is expected to be appointed in April. The court
has already received more than 200 complaints alleging war crimes, though
it will say nothing about the nature of them.
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- The new tribunal has jurisdiction only when countries
are unwilling or unable to prosecute individuals for atrocities. Cases
can be referred by states that have ratified the treaty, the U.N. Security
Council or the tribunal's prosecutor after approval from three judges.
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- Unlike the U.N. war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and
Rwanda -- based in The Hague and Arusha in Tanzania -- the ICC is not a
U.N. body.
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