Moreno Ocampo, former chief prosecutor of the TPI, demands a Europe more independent from the US to resolve conflicts

He defends that judges take the time they need to decide on the arrest warrant against Netanyahu

Oct. 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo (2003-2012), defended this Monday the need for Europe to distance itself from the policies of the United States in order to be a much more relevant actor at the time. to solve conflicts such as those in Ukraine or the Middle East.

“European countries, like Spain, can be much more active in demanding that the United States change its policy,” Ocampo said in an interview for Europa Press, seeing Washington’s lack of ability to control the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. . “That’s incredible,” he said.

It is also in the absence of initiative on the part of Washington to call into question this defense of Israel at all costs that European countries, he said, must express themselves as an alternative. “It is urgent that Europe distance itself from the United States in terms of security,” he claimed.

“The United States manipulated a State Department report to prevent it from saying that Israel was committing war crimes. They are making an immense effort to ignore the crimes,” reproached Ocampo, who is presenting his book ‘War or Justice’ these days. Towards the end of impunity’.

“The model of military power does not generate influence. The United States has no control over Israel. This shows that the United States has to review its idea that it can impose an empire,” he said.

In that sense, he explained that European countries should take a step forward and break this dependency, for example, in Ukraine, especially after they are “increasingly” carrying the burden of financing the conflict.

An agreement, he explained, that “must require that any declaration of war is a crime” and as such the ICC can intervene. Ocampo has regretted, however, that as “a European vice minister of defense” acknowledged to him a year ago, there is no plan for Ukraine.

Thus, he remembers that this interlocutor confessed to him that the expectation that is being handled is that “a part of Ukraine will remain in the West” and in that case he maintains the importance of reaching an agreement now because that means that people will stop dying.

ARRESTS WARRANT AGAINST NETANYAHU

Despite the delay of the ICC in ruling on the request of its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, to arrest Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, Luis Moreno Ocampo has explained the importance of the judges not rushing and studying a case in itself very complex.

“The fundamental thing is that the judges accepted this request from many States to present opinions for and against. And it is important that the judges listen to them, show that they are not hasty and make decisions,” he said, recalling that the case of the former Sudanese president Omar al Bashir was extended nine months.

Comparing it with the case of Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the ICC barely took a month to make the decision to arrest him for the forced displacement of Ukrainian children, he maintains that this process was “very simple” in contrast to what concerns Netanyahu. . “Now we have dead people,” he said.

“Along the way, what we have to do is work as we do so that what the judges decide has a lot of impact,” said Ocampo, who has highlighted that the courts have already warned that a crime is being committed with the humanitarian aid bloc in the Gaza Strip.

Ocampos has explained that the next step depends on the States and values ​​the movement of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office as an incentive for the States that have signed the Rome Statute to make much more efforts to implement additional measures so that the conflict does not go more.

THE WORLD AS A VIDEO GAME: “LET’S GO TO FORTNITE”

However, he highlighted that the main challenge facing humanity is the lack of political will to resolve its conflicts through dialogue. “The law is not just a matter for prosecutors and judges,” he said. “It is utopian to think that humanity will survive war,” he added.

Thus, he has warned that “war does not control terrorism”, but rather produces it, and that policies based on revenge have never worked. “The world is going towards Fortnite,” he said in reference to a video game in which the winner is whoever manages to kill the rest of the players.

“If the world continues like this, let’s get to that. There are all the incentives for Israel to escalate and attack Iran. The United States and other countries are going to support it. Where are we going with that? What is going to happen? The model of “War generates revenge,” he said.

“It is naive to think that there can be war, war was possible when we fought with spears and arrows, but if it is a war that has atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, or that a cell phone can be transformed into a bomb, then it is incompatible with civilization,” he stated.