Stardate 20030623.0215

(On Screen): Several readers have written to mention that Belgium has decided to change its universal-jurisdiction warcrimes law, so that the nation will in future only claim the right to try such criminals if they're Belgians or if their victims were Belgians. I suspect that will be acceptable to the US government. (We have equivalent laws ourselves.)

Entre Nous has a summary (with the inevitable fucked-up Blogspot archive link) of a major article from the Netherlands which summarizes the situation from the European point of view. (Among other things, it refers to our cabinet secretaries as "ministers", e.g. Foreign Minister Powell, Defense Minister Rumsfeld.) It talks about how there's been major pressure at all levels on the Belgians about this, including constant browbeating of their ambassador in Washington, and messages from corporations saying they were considering moving their Belgian divisions elsewhere.

So Belgium will change the law, at long last. And the Netherlands apparently will fill the breach. Edwin writes from the Netherlands:

This won't make you feel better, I'm afraid. Have you heard that Dutch lawmakers are following in the footsteps of their Belgian colleagues? On Tuesday the 17th, the Senate here has approved a law that makes it possible to prosecute anyone present on Dutch territory (not just residents, but visitors as well) for genocide, torture, war crimes or crimes against humanity. The definition of these crimes is pretty broad, like in the ICC treaty. There is temporary immunity for heads of state, heads of government and foreign secretaries and 'those functionaries that are generally considered immune in international law' which presumably means diplomats - temporary immunity meaning only as long as they are in office - but no mechanism for referring cases of foreign suspects to their own country. The papers have noted the similarity with the notorious Belgian law, but remarkably, the discussion in parliament was luke-warm. I am not aware of any votes against it; it has been treated as a bit of technical legislation, a logical complement to the ICC treaty. (Senate approval means it'll become law once it has been signed by the Queen and published.) But this has the potential to create a huge stink. Since foreigners cannot be prosecuted while they are abroad, a visitor such as Secretary Rumsfeld could be faced with a nasty surprise. A difference with Belgian law in general is that here complaints cannot be brought by citizens, but only by state-appointed prosecutors, who are nominally independent but generally responsive to political pressure. Still, the law is aptly abbreviated WIM (Wet Internationale Misdrijven).

This is rather surprising; I honestly thought that the Dutch had more sense than this. How long will it be before the first politically-motivated charges are filed there, eh? I guess it depends on just how "responsive to political pressure" those prosecutors are.