Alex Whiting

Palestine will turn over its first batch of documents to the International Criminal Court's prosecutor on Thursday, part of an effort to steer a preliminary inquiry that could eventually see both Israelis and Palestinians brought under investigation for war crimes..."I think the UN report was not particularly surprising," Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School who previously worked at the ICC, told VICE News. "It was expected that it would reach those kinds of conclusions, but it certainly adds to the momentum of moving this forward."

The International Criminal Court was created in 2002 with an audacious promise: to go after the biggest perpetrators of crimes against humanity and those who commit genocide. But so far, it seems, the arm of international law has been able to reach only those who have few powerful friends to protect them...Given its inability to arrest suspects on its own, said Alex Whiting, a former attorney with the I.C.C. prosecutor’s office and now a law professor at Harvard, the International Criminal Court “will only be as relevant as the international community allows it to be.” South Africa was only the most recent country to let Mr. Bashir visit and leave without arrest. It was a reminder, Mr. Whiting argued, of how hard the court must work to overcome the perception that it is targeting only Africans — and a reminder of how justice cannot be meted out unless the world powers invest in it.

Ukraine wants the International Criminal Court to investigate all alleged war crimes in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview, broadening an existing probe...Alex Whiting, a former senior ICC prosecutor, said a new referral could force an investigation of the wider conflict. "Here (Crimea and eastern Ukraine) there have been widespread allegations of war crimes and even crimes against humanity, so it will be much harder to ignore," he said.

Late last year, ambassadors from the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council shuffled into the Council's chamber to vote on the future of Palestine. After months of negotiations, the Arab states threw caution to the wind when Jordan introduced a text that called for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory within three years. The resolution fell one vote short of passing, and Palestinian ambitions were squashed yet again. Three months later, much has changed...Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School who worked for the court from 2010 to 2013, told VICE News that Palestinian leaders may still choose to refer a case in the future, despite the political repercussions — even if the Bensouda is already studying the issue they want to raise. "If they do make the referral, that will add some pressure on the prosecution to open an investigation," Whiting said. "It's not that the referral removes an impediment to getting the investigation started, but it creates an atmosphere of some expectation and pressure and signals to the prosecution that Palestine is really willing to cooperate with a future investigation."

The Palestinians formally joined the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to put international pressure on Israel and exact a higher price for its occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state...Palestine's court membership could help shift focus to settlements as a legal and not just a political issue, said Alex Whiting, a former official in the international prosecutor's office.

While multiple requests by the defense team of Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the main suspect in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, to relocate his trial have been denied, some Harvard Law School professors say the defense had legitimate qualms with the trial unfolding in Boston...“If there ever were a case for a change of venue, this is it,” said Nancy Gertner, a faculty member at the Law School and former U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Massachusetts. Law school professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. attributes the defense’s repeated requests to relocate the trial to the far-reaching impact that the bombing and the subsequent manhunt had on the Boston community...According to Harvard Law School professor Alex Whiting, judges deciding whether or not to relocate a trial must weigh a set of “competing interests.”

The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man. They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel's summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas...On its own, a high civilian death toll does not constitute evidence of war crimes, and each strike has to be investigated separately, according to interna[tiona]l law experts, including Alex Whiting of Harvard. But it "certainly raises a red flag and suggests that further investigation is warranted," said Whiting, a former top official at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.

A senior commander in the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Dominic Ongwen, appeared before a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) this week to face charges of war crimes carried out during a 20-year conflict in northern Uganda....It is not yet clear whether the ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, will seek additional charges. Alex Whiting, a former member of the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, said it was possible fresh charges could be added as further evidence was gathered in the run-up to the trial. “Since the warrant in the case is so old, the Office of the Prosecutor will need to do additional investigation [to support existing charges],” Whiting said. “In that process, it is very possible that it will uncover evidence supporting additional charges.”

Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), made his first appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday for a pretrial hearing. What now? IJT asked two experts what they expected of this first ICC case against a former child soldier-turned-perpetrator...The arrest warrant dates from 2005 and does not include crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic (CAR) or South Sudan. It is possible newcharges will be added later, says Harvard professor Alex Whiting, who worked as an investigation and prosecution coordinator at the ICC from 2010 to 2013...Whiting, however, believes it “is not a big deal” that the ICC is prosecuting a formervictim. He compares it with domestic criminal cases against violent adults who were mistreated in childhood. “The fact that you were a victim is no excuse for becoming a perpetrator,” he says. Still, he agrees that proving Ongwen was “coerced” to com- mit the crimes or “damaged” may allow his past to “count as a mitigating factor”, though not hinder his prosecution.

The defence teams of Deputy President William Ruto and journalist Joshua arap Sang are set to file a motion of no-case-to-answer as the prosecution prepares to close its case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) by March 2015. But the possibility of halting the trial after the prosecution concludes its case is minimal, in the view of Harvard University law professor Alex Whiting. “However, because the judges must take the prosecution’s evidence at its highest during this process, these motions very rarely succeed,” Whiting explained to Capital FM News.

Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, is about to face her toughest trial yet: to demonstrate that the court has enough muscle to tackle the gravest human rights cases, even if it means confronting the world’s most powerful countries...Both raise novel legal issues, international criminal lawyers say, and the prosecutor is likely to move cautiously — “not because they are politically sensitive,” wrote Alex Whiting, one of her former colleagues at the I.C.C., “but because critical support for its work on these cases is far from assured.”...According to Mr. Whiting, who now teaches at Harvard Law School: “The strong reactions to the Palestinian move to join the court show something else: that the I.C.C. still matters. A lot.”

The U.N. has accepted a request by observer state Palestine to join the International Criminal Court, clearing the way for possible war crimes complaints against Israel. Palestinians hope the tribunal will give them more leverage in a lopsided conflict and keep a distracted world focused on their statehood claims....Cases can take years, from an initial review to launching an investigation and possibly filing charges, said Alex Whiting, a senior official in the ICC prosecutor's office from 2010-2013 and now a Harvard law professor. War crimes allegedly committed during combat are among the most difficult to prove, said Whiting, suggesting a Gaza war complaint would face stiff challenges.

The United States is obliged by international law to investigate its citizens suspected of engaging in torture, but even if it does not, Americans who ordered or carried out torture can be prosecuted abroad, by legal bodies including the International Criminal Court, legal experts say. ...But for Ms. Bensouda, who has had enormous difficulty even gaining custody of some of her most high-profile defendants, let alone winning convictions, the prospect of going after Americans could prove especially tricky. The court is still new, and fragile, said one of her former colleagues, Alex Whiting, and picking a fight with the United States could be “damaging” to the court’s standing in the world. “On the other hand the legitimacy of the court depends on it reaching a point where it treats countries alike,” said Mr. Whiting, who was the prosecution coordinator in The Hague from 2010 until last year and now teaches law at Harvard University. “The court is in a very difficult position on this.”

Addressing racial disparities in criminal prosecutions was the focus of discussion at Harvard Law School on Nov. 20 at an event sponsored by the new Criminal Justice Program of Study, Research and Advocacy at Harvard Law School.

Alex Whiting, quoted in Brazilian newspaper. This article is in Portuguese.

Alex Whiting, quoted in Ukrainian newspaper. This article is in Ukranian.

Eldo Kim, the then-College undergraduate who was charged last week for allegedly sending emailed bomb threats that temporarily shut down campus last December, reached an “unusual” yet “fair” arrangement in avoiding a trial, law experts said this week...Alex Whiting, professor of the practice of criminal prosecution at the Law School, applauded the U.S. Attorney’s Office for being willing to negotiate this deal, adding that attorneys usually feel pressure to prosecute aggressively in cases like Kim’s. “I think it is a great outcome,” Whiting said. “There are consequences for him that are very real, but at the same time it takes account of the fact that he’s a young man obviously under a lot of pressure who made a bad decision and [should] have an opportunity to remake his life without a felony conviction on his record.”

When a catastrophic event like the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 occurs, there is an understandable demand for accountability…But the question stands: Where can justice be found?…Even if all these jurisdictional hurdles could be overcome and the ICC gets the chance to conduct an investigation, a successful prosecution is still far from inevitable. A prosecution would likely involve war crimes charges of murder and attacking civilians, says Alex Whiting, a professor of practice in international criminal law at Harvard. He adds, however, that this would require the prosecutor to prove the rebels "actually knew that they were targeting civilians."

Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday that whoever shot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over the Ukraine “must be brought to justice.” But how likely is it that anyone will be compelled to appear in a courtroom and answer for the death of 298 passengers and crew?…Alex Whiting, a professor of international law at Harvard Law School, told NBC News he felt it would be hard to bring a criminal case in the ICC against Russian officials, because prosecutors would need to establish that the shooters knew they were firing at a passenger plane.