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Complaint against John Howard to the International Criminal Court

Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

A document titled Complaint against John Howard to the International Criminal Court has been sent to The AIMN by a member of the SEARCH Foundation an on-line copy of the document can be found here. Permission has been given by one of the authors to reproduce the document, but due to its length (75 pages) we have reproduced a summary.

Early in 2012 the Committee of the SEARCH Foundation resolved to submit a complaint to the International Criminal Court (the ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, against John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, for his decision to send Australian forces to invade and wage war against Iraq.

The ICC is a permanent international tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and for the crime of aggression.  The Court was set up through the Stature of Rome which was drafted and signed on 17 July 1998, and came into force on 1 July, 2002.

Australia signed the Statute on 9 December 1998, ratified it on July 1 2002, so as to be bound as from 1 September 2002.

Article 17 of the Statute, which deals with ‘Issues of admissibility’ prescribes that every step of the domestic jurisdiction of a country be exhausted before the Court may take jurisdiction over a complaint.

The SEARCH Foundation believes that it has satisfied the preconditions for admissibility.

Here are the steps taken

On 16 March 2012 the Search Foundation sent  complaint to Commissioner Tony Negus APM, the head of the Australian Federal Police. The complaint is substantially the same as the one which would be sent to the Court. As far as the domestic jurisdiction is concerned, the complaint was based on Mr Howard’s violation of Division 268 of the Australian Criminal Code Act 1995. That Division ‘received’ the substance of Article 6: Genocide; Article 7: Crimes against humanity, and Article 8: War crimes, as contained in the Statute of Rome.

The Office of the AFP Commissioner replied to the effect that the complaint had been sent ‘for assessment’ and the subsequent response concluded that:

. . . An assessment by the AFP Legal Branch, of the information you have supplied, does not disclose an offence against Division 268 of the Code, and therefore the matters raised cannot be investigated by the AFP. You may wish to seek further independent legal advice to clarify this.

The SEARCH Foundation took time to reconsider the matter, to seek further legal advice, and resolved to submit a similar complaint to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The complaint was sent on 9 May 2013 to Mr Robert Bromwich SC, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The reply contained the following:

. . . The CDPP has considered the material you have provided and will not initiate a prosecution of Mr Howard based on this material. The material is not a brief of evidence, containing admissible evidence against Mr Howard. I also note that the allegations set out in your letter do not appear to fall within the terms of any offence contained in Division 268 of the Criminal Code.

The SEARCH Foundation resolved that as all avenues of domestic jurisdiction having been attempted without success, time had come to approach the International Criminal Court.

The complaint

I have the honour hereby to file with you and your office the Complaint against Mr John Winston Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, who is responsible for sending Australian military personnel into war, and into waters of, the Republic of Iraq, pursuant to a 17 March 2003 decision of the Australian Cabinet to join in the invasion of the Republic of Iraq.

As a result of this decision, I believe that offenses were committed, and that these offenses are punishable under Article 6 Genocide, Article 7 Crimes against Humanity, and Article 8 War Crimes of the Rome Statute.

I ask you initiate an investigation under Article 15, with a view to issuing a warrant of arrest for Mr John Winston Howard.

Australia’s ratification of the Rome Statute came into force on 1 September 2002, and these crimes were committed after that date. The offenses we enumerate are most serious.

On 16 March 2012, our organisation made a complaint in these same terms to both the Australian Federal Police, which is the primary agency responsible for investigating breaches of the Commonwealth Criminal Code 1995 which was amended to implement Australia’s ratification of the Rome Statute i.e. Chapter 8 – Offences against humanity and related offences, Division 268 – ‘Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the administration of the justice of the International Criminal Court’. That Division of the Code ‘receives’ the provisions of the Rome Statute of 1998, as amended.

On 23 March 2012, the Office of the Australian Federal Police Commissioner acknowledged receipt of our complaint and on May 3 2012, the AFP Operations Coordination Centre stated that our information did not disclose an offence against Division 268 and so declined to investigate.

On 9 May 2013, after consulting with many lawyers about how to proceed, we sent our complaint to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the other agency which can consider a prosecution under Division 268.

On 18 June 2013, the DPP replied that it would not initiate a prosecution of Mr Howard, noting that information provided was not a ‘brief of evidence’ and that the allegations we made did not appear to fall within the terms of any offence under Division 268.

Under Article 17(b) of the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor cannot investigate if:

“The case has been investigated by a State which has jurisdiction over it and the State has decided not to prosecute the person concerned, unless the decision resulted from the unwillingness or inability of the State genuinely to prosecute . . . “

However, we have demonstrated that the Australian State has not investigated this complaint. We argue that this is because the Australian State is unwilling to prosecute a former Prime Minister, since it is very clear to us that the invasion of Iraq directly produce breaches of Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute, as we set out below.

Therefore we consider that this complaint is open to your investigation under Article 17.

(A brief summary of) The Facts

On 11 September 2001 Mr Howard was in Washington DC. USA, on a state visit while the terrorists on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon were taking place. The day after the attacks he is reported as having declared support for the USA in retaliation: “We will help them. We will support actions they take to properly retaliate in relation to these acts of bastardry against their citizens and against what they stand for”.

Five days later the Australian Government, with the support of the Opposition Labor Party, passed a motion in the Australian Parliament invoking the ANZUS military alliance with the United States on the ground that the criminal actions of Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation responsible for the attacks of 11 September 2001, were the equivalent to a state “attack on the United States”.

. . .

In January 2002 Mr. Howard was in Washington and endorsed former President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, in which the President labelled Iran, North Korea and Iraq as an “axis of evil”, on the grounds that the three countries possessed “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs).

In June 2002 Mr. Howard returned to Washington to declare support for the Bush doctrine of “pre-emptive strike”, a doctrine which repudiated the entire framework of post-second world war international relations and asserted that the United States had the right to attack any country it deemed a threat.

. . .

On 17 September 2002 Mr. Howard presented the ONA report to Parliament and asserted that, unless Iraq was “disarmed”, its weapons of mass destruction would pose “a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people.”

. . .

On 26 February 2003 forty-three Australian international law experts publicly warned that:

“The weak and ambiguous evidence presented to the international community by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to justify a pre-emptive strike underlines the practical danger of a doctrine of pre-emption. A principle of pre-emption would allow national agendas completely to destroy the system of collective security contained in Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and return us to the pre-1945 era, where might equalled right.”

They further warned that:

“The International Criminal Court now has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity … It attributes criminal responsibility to individuals responsible for planning military action that violates international humanitarian law and those who carried it out. It specifically extends criminal liability to heads of state, leaders of governments, parliamentarians, government officials and military personnel.”

The Australian Government, led by Mr. Howard, defied legal opinion. Parliament was adjourned on 8 March 2003. In the late hours of 17 March 2003, Mr. Howard and his Cabinet voted to authorise Australian air, land and naval personnel to attack Iraq. US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage made an official request for the involvement of Australian troops late on the night of March 20. It later became known that Australian special operations troops, with Cabinet authorisation, had entered Iraq as much as 30 hours before the outbreak of war.

. . .

The House of Representatives Official Hansard records later that day, at 2.03pm, that Prime Minister Howard moved a resolution asking parliament to support the Cabinet decision. The record reads in part:

“This morning I announced that Australia had joined a coalition, led by the United States, which intends to disarm Iraq of its prohibited weapons of mass destruction.”

The ‘facts’ – and they are comprehensive with links provided to the ‘evidence’ – continue for over a dozen pages and conclude with:

As a result of the 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been at least 105,439 – 115,149 civilians killed, and the Wikileaks war logs suggest a further 13,750, according to Iraq Body Count.

Nature of the complaint

The establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court with the capacity to investigate and prosecute genocide, the crime of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity, was a long standing human rights and foreign policy objective of the Australian Government.

The Commonwealth of Australia signed the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court ‘the I.C.C.’, on 9 December 1998. It deposited its instrument of ratification on 1 July 2002.

Australia’s instrument of ratification includes a declaration affirming the primacy of Australia’s criminal jurisdiction in relation to crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court. It outlines the conditions under which a person in Australian custody or control would be surrendered to the Court and clarifies Australia’s interpretation of the crimes within the Statute. The declaration has full effect in Australian law and is not a reservation. It reinforces safeguards already built into the Statute to preserve Australian sovereignty over its criminal jurisdiction.

The provisions of the Rome Statute have been ‘received’ into Australian domestic legislation, which must be read in a way consistent with that Statute; and that includes the provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act [No. 12 of] 1995, particularly those of Chapter 8 – Offences against humanity and related offences, Division 268 – Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the administration of the justice of the International Criminal Court.

The provisions referred to hereafter are, in order of their appearance in this complaint, reproduced seriatim in ANNEX 26.

By the operation of Art. 12 (1) Australia has accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The Accused is a subject of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The Accused’s criminal policy and practice could be characterised as an “act of aggression”, the “supreme international crime” as early defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg” (hereafter IMT), and thus in violation of the United Nations Charter’s Art. 2 (3) which prescribes the use of peaceful means to settle international disputes between Members, Art.2 (4) which proscribes the use of force against sovereign states, Art. 33 which sets down the duty to exhaust peaceful settlement of disputes and Art. 39 which states that the power to determine threats to peace or acts of aggression rests with the Security Council. [ANNEX 26]

The Accused knew or was in a position to know that no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

The Accused had no legal justification to participate in the “coalition of the willing” in a war against Iraq under Security Council Resolution 1441, because that Resolution could not “reasonably be interpreted [as the Davids Commission found] as authorising individual member states to use military force against Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s Resolutions.”

The Accused rendered himself liable of endangering the international peace and security of the people of Iraq by causing the death of untold numbers of Iraqi people, by authorising the destruction, burning and looting of priceless historical treasures including those of two ancient civilisations which are the common inheritance of entire humanity.

The Accused is responsible for:

  • acts of aggression, as defined in United Nations G. A. Res. 3314, Art. 1 (1974),
  • breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights,
  • crimes against peace, as defined in Art. 6(a) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and Art. 16 of the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (1996),
  • war crimes, as defined in Art. 6 (b) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and in Art. 8 of the I.C.C. Statute,
  • crimes against humanity, as defined in Art. 6(c) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and Art. 7 of the I.C.C. Statute,
  • crimes against Prisoners of War, including acts in contravention of the Article 8, and against the Convention against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) and Arts. 13 and 14 of the Geneva Conventions Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949), and their 1977 Protocols,
  • crimes against civilians in contravention of Article 7 and Article 8, including the targeting of civilian populations and civilian infrastructure such as markets and residential areas, causing extensive destruction of property not justified by military objectives, using cluster bombs, using depleted uranium weapons; and acting in violation of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) and the relative Protocol 1, Art. 54 on the protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and Art. 55 on protection of the natural environment.

The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction. Subject to any other ground that you may find in the course of your investigation, the Accused is responsible for flagrant, repeated and longstanding violation of the provisions of the I.C.C. Statute Arts. 5 (a) (b), (c) and (d), Article 6 (a), (b), (c), Article 7 (d), (i), (j), (k), and Article 8.

Request

I respectfully request that you as the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court initiate an investigation with a view to issuing a warrant of arrest for Mr. John Winston Howard, on the basis of the information that I have provided and which is in my view sufficient for that purpose.

At the time of publication of the document – August 2014 – there had not yet been a response.

 

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64 comments

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  1. Peter Ball

    Howard will thumb his nose at this one

  2. Loz

    If anything comes of this we will enter a brave new world.

  3. mludowyk

    And He should also be held responsible for the resulting disaster that is today’s Iraq and the global terror threat that has ensued

  4. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    Well done AIM Network,

    for giving it a go.

    If nothing else, it puts Howard and his cronies plus Abbott and his cronies On Notice that we’re watching them and we DO take action where and when we can.

  5. The Lion

    There is also the very serious problem of handing of Prisoners of War and or Civilian Prisoners to the United States of America for incarceration, John Howard was aware that the US was undertaking enhanced interrogation techniques, Geneva which Australia is a signatory to, and which the Australian parliament has made Australian Law, is specific in that it should not hand prisoners over to a party that is in breach of the articles of Geneva. Australia handed over all prisoners to the US and we know what happened in Adu Graib and Guantanamo Bay and other sites! It is known with out doubt that Australia was well aware of the happenings of both major Prisons and refrained nay refused to demand that Australian caught prisoners be returned to Australian Custody! Note that Articles

    Article 130

    Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.

    Article 131

    No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.

    Article 132

    At the request of a Party to the conflict, an enquiry shall be instituted, in a manner to be decided between the interested Parties, concerning any alleged violation of the Convention.

    If agreement has not been reached concerning the procedure for the enquiry, the Parties should agree on the choice of an umpire who will decide upon the procedure to be followed.

    Once the violation has been established, the Parties to the conflict shall put an end to it and shall repress it with the least possible delay.

    if there is an argument that they are not soldiers the US Supreme Court ruled all are at least Civilians and there are corresponding articles for Civilians in Schedule 4 Article 147 through to 149!

    John Howard was more than aware of what was happening as it happened to Two Australians, he even went as far as sending AFP officers and ASIO officers to Guantanamo Bay to Question one,………… Hicks! Note also when Hicks wrote his book the AFP and the DPP decided they would go after the proceeds from that book,…………Mysteriously just before the High Court hearing they dropped the Action! I suggest it was on the basis that the High Court would have had to rule that John Winston Howard should stand trial for War Crimes!

  6. rangermike1

    Sadly it will come to pass that nothing will be done about this, while Abbott tears this Country apart. Like Father like Son, Li’ll Johnny and Abbott will continue on their merry way. Please QLD, do the right thing and vote the LNP out.

  7. corvus boreus

    I would have to align with the opinion of Dagney J Taggart (SPQR) on this one.
    A short arrow from long bow across distance through fog.
    If it it should mark the beast, I shall applaud, then eat a dish of crow in humble pie.

  8. John Fraser

    <

    Notice how the media releases today have Abbott recommending an award to the victims of the Sydney siege.

    At the same time that the authorities admit that one of the hostages (may) have been killed by friendly fire (hit in the heart by a ricochet while laying on the floor).

    The Abbott manipulation of the media continues with their blessing and the blessing of the N.S.W. police.

    When are the surviving victims be allowed to speak ?

  9. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    I wonder if there is any law that restricts the victims or the families of victims from speaking now regardless of the barriers put up by the trigger-happy NSW police, Rabid Abbott or Bambi Baird?

  10. Dagney J. Taggart

    I was beginning to give up hope on hearing anything that went on in the cafe. I am struggling to understand what all the talk about bravery awards is about, other than an attempt be the governments of NSW and Australia to play a bit of the old pea and thimble game.

    If it turns out that the hostage was killed by the police, the continued (apparent) suppression of the hostages is not a good look.

  11. Pingback: John Howard stands accused of war crimes | Global Media Post

  12. stephentardrew

    No matter what happens it needs to be said and repeated often.

    To lose history is to live a lie and that is exactly what this mob wants.

    Stay the course and don’t let them avoid the facts.

    At least If we know it will not be forgotten and may one day have vital importance.

  13. Jennifer Meyer-Smith

    Hear, hear stephentardrew.

  14. mars08

    No doubt we’ve all seen the public outrage following the killing of civilians in Paris (and London and Ottawa and Boston and…) . The events are captured on video and that footage (and still photos) is beamed around the world. Those who have seen these images have, understandably, reacted with grief and anger.

    Now… let’s consider the images that we in the “coalition” nations DID NOT see after the unprovoked attack on Iraq. Consider that these horrible images were on TV screens and newspapers all over the world…. including the Middle East…

    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/63
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/64
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/65
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/66
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/67
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/68
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/58
    http://warisacrime.org/image/tid/59

    And understand that the harsh sanctions imposed on Iraq at the insistence of the US were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians (mainly children) for a DECADE before the contrived invasion in 2003.

    http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=824

  15. corvus boreus

    stephentardrew,
    Even if I express scepticism, about current probability of success of litigation in the ICC, I still see and applaud the merit in unearthing and compiling an ongoing evidential account (aka a ‘case’) about the degree of duplicity of conduct and culpability in illegal violence and atrocities of one John Winston Howard, regarding his involvement in the events of Gulf War II (Clone of the Attack). If nothing else it makes an accurate informational contribution to the collective recount of past realities that we call history.

  16. Phi

    Howard will not be comfortable.

    Howard will will be silently squirming.

    Howard is now openly accused of the worst possible atrocities.

    Howard made his decision to invade sovereign Iraq based on political and not on legal or humane considerations.

    With my sons I joined more than one million Australians in street protests against Howard’s toxic determination to wage unprovoked war on Iraq. We knew the facts and Howard knew the facts. He chose to ignore the facts, and millions died.

    Howard’s contempt for the citizens of this nation will never be forgotten.

    The worth and standing of the ICC will now stand or fall on it’s decision in this application.

    Howard must be prosecuted – let justice prevail.

  17. lawrencewinder

    Hmmm….. if Little Johnnie will only admit to slight embarrassment at being wrong in his certainty of the existence of WMD’s, I’m not sure he’ll lose any sleep on the occasion of this legal assault……

  18. Roswell

    I had a look at the original document in the link provided. It’s an impressive piece of work. It deserves success.

  19. Kael'thas Kamiya

    At least in Australia, you can make this sort of charges against a leader or former leader of the country. In china, you are lucky if you didn’t get stopped and arrested for treason.

  20. mars08

    And… in Australia, you can make this sort of charge against a leader or former leader of the country… without being killed by a 500kg Kodiak bear while you are sleeping. Isn’t that great?

  21. stephentardrew

    Subtle Mars8.

  22. Brett

    The Iraq invasion was a noble and just one. It was the West’s duty to remove Saddam, who is the one who has committed genocide, as well as harbouring terrorists and had been caught previously meddling with WMDs.

  23. mars08

    Sarcasm Brett? If so…. please use the appropriate font…

  24. Möbius Ecko

    For Kaye Lee, more F-35 ammo.

    I was going to put this in an on-topic article from the past but it would have been pushed off the list very quickly, so sorry for being off topic here. It’s worth listening to for those against the purchase of F-35s, much more of a lemon than I believed and how Western countries get hooked into the extremely expensive US Military Industrial Complex.

    High-tech heaven: defence spending from the F-111 to the F35

  25. Kerri

    The information in this articlr appears quite old? Has there been a change in these charges or actions by SEARCH or The Hague?? How is the case progressing??

  26. Michael Taylor

    Kerri, no update yet.

  27. Jeanette

    Well I only hope the Australian Taxpayer does not have to pay for his defence. Iraq is now a cot case and I guess with everything the US touches other parts of the middle east will be the same. What about Scott Morrison? Isn’t anyone who can, hurling him before an International Court on genocide charges?

  28. Kerri

    Thanks Michael. Jeanette I sincerely hope Morrison gets his call to The Hague but guven it’s taken this long to reach Howard I wouldn’t hold your breath. I am also hoping Blair and Bush W get their trials.

  29. Tony Rabbit

    If only they would get the other two as well – Blair and Bush.

  30. corvus boreus

    The principal function of the Australian forces deployed during Gulf War II was to provide the ‘s’ in ‘allies’.

  31. Nina Bravery

    thank you for letting us know,and thank you for keeping on with this.it truly deserves to have him tried.

  32. Erotic Moustache

    Seems to me that the SEARCH Foundation is an organisation worthy of everyone’s interest. I hadn’t previously been aware of its existence, so at the very least thanks to AIMN for that revelation.

  33. diannaart

    Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague

    Is at least, a start.

  34. Free the world

    What a waste of time and money. get a life people Howard is retired.

    lets see you writing about ISIS killing people, raping women today and tomorrow.

    Thank God Howard and others have the balls to do what they do. Being a fence sitter doesnt work against radical islam

  35. Pingback: The Fate of the ICC  Dark Politricks

  36. Möbius Ecko

    So misnomer Free the world you’re OK with Howard being a war criminal helping to cause thousands of deaths and rapes, and being responsible for the rise of IS and other radical Islamic groups because of his illegal actions?

  37. Brett

    Howard responsible for rapes, that’s so deluded it’s not funny.

    Mars08, no sarcasm intended at all. You have a problem with what I wrote? And just out of interest, which font is the ‘sarcasm font’?

  38. stephentardrew

    Baptism Font.

  39. lee621

    The crimes against Australian Workers are the crimes that I am speaking of. 1998.. let it never be forgotten that Howard, Reith and the NFF attempted to snuff out the hopes of the Australian workers and their protectors; the Unions.

  40. Pingback: The Fate of the ICC » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

  41. Pingback: Complaint against John Howard to the International Criminal Court | THE INTERNET POST

  42. Pingback: Complaint against Former PM John Howard to the International Criminal Court – Gumshoe News

  43. ROBERTSGT40

    Yeah, like the Hague will get to the bottom of all war crimes. Bush, Cheney Powell, Rice, Clinton(s), Blair and others all waiting their turn at being prosecuted. Yawn

  44. Harquebus

    Courts should prosecute advocates of growth. They are killing us all.

  45. Zathras

    To use his own handy-dandy excuse, a prosecution would “send a message” to those politicians who think they can act with impunity and put personal political interests above everything else, particularly the lives of innocents.

    If Rudd can be investigated for complicity in the deaths of 4 insulation installers then the violent death of hundreds of thousands can’t be simply brushed aside.

  46. Pingback: “There was no genocide in Australia! John Howard’s greatest lie! | waynesimmonds2

  47. mark delmege

    kinda sorta off topic but its not really – it wasn’t just Howard it was the whole rotten system that supported war – starting with our so called ABC and the other media outlets – they pumped for war just like they still do.

    Anyone who ever thought the ABC or Al Jazeera was a responsible honest reporter of news only has to follow their coverage of Ukraine. The Lie machine is busy with a Lie a Minute on this one. It’s like Iraq all over again…and any number of wars before or since. This is shameful propaganda and it has the blessings of the Labor and Liberal Parties highest offices. And the Greens and every other political party has been shunted into silence. This is obscene and it should frighten the crap out of every Australian.

    did you get that …. This is obscene and it should frighten the crap out of every Australian.

  48. Haut

    This is fantastic another Jew Rothschild war mongering Stooge, If you :DENY” that you are a fool, this scumbag, like “ALL” Israeli criminals, is protected by this criminal network of Usury, they own “ALL” western media & constantly bombard you with BULLSHIT, Israeli propaganda, just do the research, check out “WHO” owns your Reserve bank! IMF! UN! Anyone the media attacks & says they are terrorists, its the Opposite, Putin is kicking there ass, Iceland has arrested Rotschild bankers and is now priting their “OWN” money the way Governments are supposed to. I hope Howard & all these scumbags “HANG” Your judgement is waiting!

  49. Carlos Weinman

    Bush,Blair and Howard, 25 years each.Tens of thousands killed for NOTHING !!!!!!!!!!!

  50. mark delmege

    Almost as funny as Abbott advising Poroshenko

  51. ImagiNation

    This certainly gives support to the evidence implicating Howard in the false flag event at Port Arthur for gun control. It proves he has no problems with the killing of innocents. Just the fact that twice in his career he has been implicated in mass murder is chilling.

  52. ImagiNation

    In November 2011 The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission exercised universal jurisdiction to try in absentia former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, convicting both for crimes against peace because of what the tribunal concluded was the unlawful invasion of Iraq.

    In May 2012 after hearing testimony for a week from victims of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the tribunal unanimously convicted in absentia former President Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General John Yoo and Jay Bybee, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former counselors David Addington and William Haynes II of conspiracy to commit war crimes, specifically torture. The tribunal referred their findings to the chief prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

    In November 2013, the tribunal found the State of Israel guilty of genocide of the Palestinian people and convicted former Israeli general Amos Yaron for crimes against humanity and genocide for his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

    Unfortunately, The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission does not have the power of sentencing those found guilty but are registered as war criminals. Howard’s name is not there because the Northern Hemisphere doesn’t give a rats bum about Australia. It’s about time we stopped fighting them for them.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commission

  53. Nic Faulkner

    AIM have failed to show the ICC that the Matter was not dealt with domestically. As the article says, both the AFP and DPP said that no evidence was supplied, nor legal argument that shows an offence under the Criminal Code. yes they may be correct about what Howard did, which we all know is the case, but in law there are processes and rules (i’s and t’s) that must be met.

  54. Frank

    Because the International Criminal Court has not acted in the defence of the multitude of innocent – the men women and children of Iraq and the peoples of the world, shows me they – the International Criminal Court are also complicit with these crimes, these cronies must be replaced for the sake of justice. Dialogue and education and not military force with weapons of mass destruction is the the way to resolve conflict. Lets Meditate

  55. Pingback: Reference Page – Lest we forget – 5122

  56. JDC Clark

    You people really have no clue; you probably vote for the Greens.
    And who really cares anyway; most Australians in the armed forces are morons who enlisted because they had no other avenue.
    High school dropouts with IQ’s just above the retarded cut off.
    Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise in a eugenic sense that their gene pools have been eliminated?

  57. OPPOSE THE MAJOUR PARTIES

    can anyone update aimn readers on the progress of this complaint about John Howard?

  58. Michael Taylor

    It is my understanding that it was not heard.

  59. Pingback: Complaint against Former PM John Howard to the International Criminal Court | Gumshoe News

  60. Pingback: Exactly What Makes My Jokes More Amusing Than Those Of Sasha Baron Cowen, And How I Nearly Got Myself Killed. | oscarwildbill

  61. Pingback: Complainst Against John Howard In The International Criminal Court | oscarwildbill

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