The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is withholding valuable information from the International Criminal Court (ICC), hindering the court’s investigation of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, according to a key U.S. ambassador.
At a Wednesday Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack testified that she believes the DOD is the one department holding up U.S. support for the ICC investigations into alleged Russian war crimes. During the hearing, Van Schaack also testified that the DOD may be blocking support for the ICC’s war crimes investigations in Ukraine out of concern that such cooperation would expose the United States and its allies to added legal liability for their own wartime conduct in recent history.
