On November 14, the Hague-based ICC, perhaps hoping to make itself appear relevant amid a growing wave of formal withdrawals, issued a threat about potentially prosecuting U.S. troops. "Members of U.S. armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014," read a "report" issued by ICC's self-styled "chief prosecutor" Fatou Bensouda (shown), a controversial Muslim lawyer from Gambia who served one of the most oppressive dictators in the world before taking the UN ICC post. The threats follow calls for Bush and Obama to be prosecuted for war crimes, too.
The kangaroo court's "chief prosecutor" also claimed that operatives with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency might have subjected more than two dozen detainees to "torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape" between December 2002 and March 2008. The alleged crimes took place in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania, according to the report. Echoing previous rhetoric, ICC "prosecutors" said they would "imminently" decide whether to try and press forward with a full-scale investigation and possible war-crimes charges against U.S. military and intelligence personnel. The court also claims jurisdiction over vague "crimes of aggression."