US forces, CIA may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan: ICC

This June 3, 2014 file photo shows US soldiers as they patrol near Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan. (Photos by AFP)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced that the US military and the CIA may be guilty of carrying out war crimes in Afghanistan.

On Monday, the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda made the announcement while unveiling the results of a preliminary probe launched into the US’s actions in the country.

Bensouda noted that if proven, the war crimes were carried out mainly between 2003 and 2004 during the "cruel and violent" questioning of prisoners.

There is "reasonable basis to believe that, in the course of interrogating these detainees ... members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape,” she said.

This file photo taken on September 29, 2015 shows Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda waiting for former vice-president in the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to enter the court room of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

"Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture," said the ICC, adding that CIA personnel seem to have tortured a further 27 prisoners. It added that it is yet to decide if it will launch a full investigation into the case.

“These alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals," said the report. "They appear to have been committed as part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract 'actionable intelligence.’”

The probe is the first time a formal ICC investigation has scrutinized US crimes.

The ICC has repeatedly highlighted alleged abuses of detainees by American troops between 2003 and 2005 that it believes have not been adequately addressed by the US government.

The US government has insisted that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over US citizens because Washington never ratified the Rome Statute that established the court in the first place.

Afghanistan is still suffering from insecurity and violence years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.