For someone who isn’t a citizen of the United States, it’s not illegal to fight against the military of the United States. It’s not possible for Assange to have committed a crime here.
Would you suggest indicting a drone operator of the US Air Force for violating Afghanistan’s law against murdering people?
Yes. Actually, it is. You have to be a lawful combatant to receive combatant immunity under international law.
The U.S. Air Force consists of lawful combatants. They are members of the armed forces and wear uniforms that readily distinguish themselves as combatants, which permits the opposing party to a conflict to abide by principles of distinction and proportionality. They are therefore disanalogous.
CIA operatives, however, engaged in spying or armed conflict, arguably do not enjoy combatant immunity. If the Taliban had captured a CIA drone operator, there is a strong argument that they could have tried, convicted, and sentenced the operator without violating international law.
What part of The Hague Convention of 1907, the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, or the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 did you rely on in forming the opinion you've just shared with us?
The United States itself does not respect international law and does not permit its soldiers to be prosecuted in the ICJ under any circumstances. Therefore there is no reason to afford it any similar consideration.
International law is largely a myth due to the extreme power differential between the United States and most other countries. The only hard and fast rule is that might makes right.
The ICJ handles dispute between states. It has no authority to prosecute the soldiers of any country.
You are, perhaps, referring to the ICC, established by the Rome Statute - to which the United States is not a party.
The issue of whether the United States respects international law is not likely to be conducive to productive conversation on HN. It is also beside the point of this specific topic.
its not productive conversation with any american, as you are all brainwashed anyways by your corrupt government and media. As far as I'm concerned any american is complicit in war crimes.
Please don't post flamebait here or engage in nationalistic flamewars. Yes there are huge challenges to conversation across deep divides—but the site guidelines require that we make good-faith efforts to overcoming those challenges or—if you can't or don't want to do that—simply not to post.
Operatives aren't protected and they don't even need to give the spook a trial - summary execution is allowed for spies and saboteurs but most governments usually find capture and trade more productive.
One thing I have wondered about is why we haven't seen any organized crime trying to claim uniformed combatant protections - they already have several process steps in many cases.
Following your argument, isn't then drone operatators in some respects illegal combatants? Or really anyone not easily identifiable as enemy combatants?
Not that I think that arguing from the point of international law, and especially war time international law is of much relevancy in this case.
US has in recently shown little respect for many aspects of what was thought to be international law, but through US acts the water has been muddied.
The relationship with the ICC, one of the foremost attempts at establishing a legitimate international court for war crimes comes to mind. It is however far from the only issue where US recently shown an amount of disrespect to international law usually only seen from totalitarian regimes.
Doesn’t this depend on the person’s combatant status? I do suspect that enemy combatants in uniform are afforded the protections you mention, but I don’t think Assange can reasonably be assigned to that class.
Would you suggest indicting a drone operator of the US Air Force for violating Afghanistan’s law against murdering people?