Ethics Newsline®

WASHINGTON
Smarting from a legal rebuke for mistreating Mexican prisoners sentenced to death in the United States, the Bush administration last week said it will pull out of the international protocol that gave the prisoners the right to appeal their treatment to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.

The ICJ last year agreed with 51 Mexicans now on U.S. death rows who complained that officials violated their international rights by failing to allow them to contact their consular officials after being arrested.

By blocking access to consular officials, the United States violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty guaranteeing people arrested abroad quick access to their government representatives.

The Bush administration, which views the ICJ ruling as interference with its use of capital punishment, last week said that while it will honor the court’s ruling in this case, it will no longer adhere to the optional protocol allowing detainees to appeal their cases to the ICJ.

The United States authored the optional protocol in 1963, ratified it in 1969, and was the first to invoke it before the ICJ, successfully suing Iran for seizing 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1979, noted the Washington Post.

Last week, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Darla Jordan said the optional protocol no longer serves U.S. interests because it played out “in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the convention.”

Characterizing the ICJ’s ruling as a disruption of the U.S. domestic criminal system, Jordan said the Bush administration decided to prevent future rebukes from the ICJ by refusing to recognize its jurisdiction.

“By withdrawing from the protocol, the United States has joined the 70 percent of the countries that do not belong. For example, Brazil, Canada, Jordan, Russia, and Spain do not belong,” she said, according to the New York Times.

Countries that continue to support the measure include Australia, Britain, Germany, and Japan, noted the Times.