Shafaq News- Baghdad
A legal file estimating Iraq’s damages from the 2003 invasion at about $5 trillion has been prepared for possible international action, academic and economist Nasser Al-Kinani told Shafaq News on Saturday, urging Baghdad to rejoin the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Al-Kinani explained that he had spent years compiling documents, video recordings, photographs, and international reports related to violations and damage caused by the invasion and occupation.
He said he had contacted law firms and legal companies in the United States, Britain, and other countries to examine the possibility of filing compensation claims on Iraq’s behalf, and legal bodies that reviewed the file estimated possible compensation at the $5 trillion figure, to be claimed from countries that participated in the invasion, led by the United States.
The damages Al-Kinani wants documented include losses suffered by state institutions, Iraqi, Arab, and foreign private-sector companies, and citizens affected by the war and its aftermath. He also pointed to the large number of Iraqis killed, wounded, displaced, or otherwise harmed during and after the invasion.
The main obstacle, however, is that Iraq is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, according to the economist.
Iraq’s interim government under Iyad Allawi decided to join the Rome Statute in February 2005 before withdrawing the decision in March of the same year. Al-Kinani argued that rejoining the ICC would give Baghdad an opportunity to move legal files related to violations, compensation, and the protection of state and citizen rights.
The ICC, established under the Rome Statute, prosecutes individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. It is not primarily a court for settling compensation claims between states.
Under Article 25 of the Rome Statute, the court’s criminal jurisdiction applies to natural persons, not states, while Article 11 governs the court’s temporal jurisdiction, limiting it generally to crimes committed after the Statute enters into force for the state concerned. Article 75 allows the court to order reparations to victims, including restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation, but only within proceedings linked to a convicted individual. It does not provide a direct mechanism requiring one state to pay compensation to another.
The ICC previously examined allegations of war crimes committed by British forces in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 because the United Kingdom is a state party to the Rome Statute, but the Office of the Prosecutor closed the Iraq/UK preliminary examination in December 2020 without opening a full investigation, while stating that the decision did not prevent reconsideration if new facts or evidence emerged.
A separate compensation mechanism previously applied to Iraq after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations Compensation Commission awarded about $52.4 billion to roughly 1.5 million successful claimants from individuals, companies, governments, and international organizations, and said all awarded compensation had been paid in full after the final payment was made in January 2022.