“How many Africans have been brought before the ICC? And how many of these Westerners have been brought to the ICC?” Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré blasted the International Criminal Court as a “tool of imperialism” in defense of his government’s decision to exit the body, a process it began earlier this year along with fellow Sahel states Mali and Niger. Traoré said the Hague-based tribunal never existed to hold Western leaders accountable for war crimes. “If the ICC truly existed, the George Bushes, Tony Blairs, and others should be in prison, even the Obamas. In Iraq, people were killed, weren’t they, over tales of weapons of mass destruction? In the end, how many hundreds of thousands of children died? What did that yield? Who went to prison?” The European Parliament passed a resolution in June criticizing the Traoré government’s sweeping civic and political reforms and urging it to reverse its decision to leave the ICC. Burkina severed diplomatic relations with its former colonizer France later that month. Traoré has threatened to cut ties with the EU if Brussels continues to interfere in its domestic affairs.

From BreakThrough News via This RSS Feed.