A former judge at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said former US Vice President Dick Cheney should – and eventually will – stand trial for war crimes for his role in the Iraq War.
"Some of us have long thought that Cheney and a number of CIA agents who did what they did in those so-called black holes should appear before the" International Criminal Court (ICC), Thomas Buergenthal said in an interview with Newsweek.
Buergenthal, 81, served as a judge at the ICJ – the main judicial arm of the United Nations – for 10 years before retiring in 2010.
The ICJ, unlike the ICC, has no jurisdiction to try individuals accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. As the ICJ is not a criminal court, it does not have a prosecutor able to initiate such proceedings.
Buergenthal was born in the former Czechoslovakia and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a boy. He is now a US citizen and a professor of law at George Washington University in Washington, DC.