Adding to the War Crimes File
Reading the Secretary of Defense's public statement that the mission would not be 'guided by rules rooted in the law of armed conflict,' former UN special rapporteur David Kaye flagged the declaration as material for any future war crimes prosecution.
#rule of law #resistance and witness
The Secretary of Defense’s public statement that the mission would not be “guided by rules rooted in the law of armed conflict” amounted, on its face, to a public declaration that jus in bello principles were inapplicable to the operation. International law professor David Kaye, a former UN Special Rapporteur, flagged the statement as a near-textbook entry for any eventual war crimes prosecution file.
The reason such statements have evidentiary weight is not that they prove a specific war crime; it is that they document the leadership’s stated intent to operate outside the legal framework that defines those crimes. Prosecutors looking for proof of mens rea years from now will find such public declarations harder to misinterpret than internal cables.