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Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called on the United States to join the International Criminal Court over Russia’s alleged war crimes in Ukraine, saying America’s refusal to join “contradicts our commitment to human rights.”
The Minnesota congresswoman, who fled her home country at the age of 8 to escape the Somali civil war, introduced legislation last week that would also codify the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice and repeal the Hague Invasion Act, which the United States bans from supporting the International Criminal Court.
In this April 20, 2021 file photo, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., speaks at Brooklyn Center, Minn. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
“Like many of us, I have been appalled by reports of massacres, attacks on civilians, mass graves and rapes by Russian forces,” Omar said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the US is not a party to the International Criminal Court, the main body responsible for investigating and prosecuting these crimes.”
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The International Criminal Court, based in the Netherlands, was established 20 years ago by an international treaty to prosecute war crimes and other serious crimes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin faces war crimes indictments by dozens of countries around the world. (ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
The US has long kept the court at arm’s length, a position that has hardened under the Trump administration.
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But now that President Biden has called Putin a “war criminal” and said his invasion of Ukraine amounts to “genocide,” Omar and other lawmakers say the US must join the ICC.
“It would be shockingly hypocritical to support an ICC investigation into Russia while denying the court’s very existence as a non-member,” Omar told Insider.
The ICC has launched an investigation into war crimes in Ukraine, but Russia, like the United States, is not a member of the court.
As Russian forces pulled out of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, satellite imagery and journalists cataloged the shocking mass graves and murdered civilians left behind.
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Foreign Minister Antony Blinken also cited Russian shelling of “residential buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping malls and ambulances” as well as “attacks deliberately aimed at civilians.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.