SINCE the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Labour ministers have been repeating a similar refrain.
“If cases do ever become a matter for the UK, then there is a proper legal process that has to be followed,” Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Friday.
“There’s a proper Government process, including the Foreign Office process, that has to be followed, and therefore it’s not appropriate for me to comment on any individual case as Home Secretary.”
Cooper’s comments echo information given out by the UK Government on Thursday.
Issuing a statement in response to the ICC arrest warrants, the Labour administration informed journalists that there is a “domestic legal process through our independent courts that determines whether or not to endorse the warrant in accordance with the UK’s ICC Act 2001”.
The line is a convenient one for a Labour Party that does not want to jeopardise its diplomatic relations with the Israel government – even if it is led by a man wanted internationally for alleged crimes against humanity.
However, Labour’s talk of “proper process” is a smokescreen.
The process is spelled out in the 2001 ICC Act, and consists of little more than having a UK judge rubber-stamp the arrest warrants.
Section 2.1 of the act states: “Where the Secretary of State receives a request from the ICC for the arrest and surrender of a person alleged to have committed an ICC crime, or to have been convicted by the ICC, he shall transmit the request and the documents accompanying it to an appropriate judicial officer.”
And the crucial part, section 2.3, adds: “If the request is accompanied by a warrant of arrest and the appropriate judicial officer is satisfied that the warrant appears to have been issued by the ICC, he shall endorse the warrant for execution in the United Kingdom.”
UK legislation is then clear: the “proper process” to execute an ICC arrest warrant in the UK is simply to approve it as long as the “warrant appears to have been issued by the ICC”.
Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP who served as Keir Starmer’s shadow attorney general before the General Election, has been clear that there is no real legal barrier to the UK Government upholding the ICC warrants.
Now the chair of Westminster’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Thornberry told Sky News: "If Netanyahu comes to Britain, our obligation under the Rome Convention would be to arrest him under the warrant from the ICC.
"[It’s] not really a question of should, we are required to because we are members of the ICC."
