Russia: International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Putin

The UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber issued an arrest warrant on Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin in connection with alleged war crimes relating to deportation and “transfer illegal” of children from occupied Ukraine, reported the person in charge of this court.

“The content of the order is secret to protect the victims,” ​​declared the president of the Court, Piotr Hofmański, who explained that “nevertheless, the judges decided to make the existence of the order public, in the interest of justice and to prevent future crimes.

The Court’s II Pre-Trial Chamber also issued an arrest warrant against the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.

The orders state that each of them is “allegedly responsible for the war crime of illegal deportation” of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, the court said when announcing the decision.

criminal liability

“The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory since at least February 24, 2022,” the International Criminal Court detailed. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin and Lvova-Belova have individual criminal responsibility“.

The court found reasonable grounds to hold Putin responsible for having committed the acts directly, jointly with or through others, as well as “by failure to exercise adequate control over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or permitted their commission, and who were under their effective authority and control, in accordance with superior responsibility”.

All the charges are in accordance with the Rome Statute, which created the judicial body in 1998. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are parties to the Statute.

protect victims

The court’s prosecutor, Karim AA Khan, said those responsible for the alleged crimes must be held accountable and the children must be returned to their families and communities.

“We cannot allow children to be treated as if they were spoils of war“, he stated. “The incidents identified by my Office include the deportation of at least hundreds of children taken from orphanages and foster homes. Many of these children, as we denounce, have then been given up for adoption in the Russian Federation.”

Through presidential decrees issued by President Putin, the law in Russia was changed to expedite the granting of Russian citizenship, which made it easier for them to be adopted by Russian families.

“My Office alleges that these acts, among others, demonstrate intent to permanently remove these children from their own country“, he said. “At the time of these deportations, Ukrainian children were persons protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

The Chamber had initially decided that the warrants should not be published in order to protect the victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation, Hofmański said.

However, taking into account that the conduct addressed in the present situation is presumably ongoing, and that public knowledge of the orders can contribute to the prevention of the commission of new crimes, the Chamber considered that it is “in the interest of justice authorize the Secretariat to publicly disclose the existence of the warrants, the names of the suspects, the crimes for which the warrants are issued, and the modes of liability established by the Chamber,” said the president of the Court.

Asked by reporters to comment on the arrest warrants at the regular Friday noon briefing in New York, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric stressed that the Court and the UN were “separate institutions, with separate mandates“.

About the International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court is an independent and permanent judicial body. It was created in accordance with the Rome Statute, signed on July 17, 1998 at a conference held in the Italian capital.

Its competence extends to all the most serious international crimes committed after July 1, 2002, the date of entry into force of the Rome Statute.

The court’s jurisdiction is limited to crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as the crime of aggression.

During its first 20 years of operation, the Court has tried and resolved cases of great importance for international justice, shedding light on crimes committed by the use of child soldiers, the destruction of cultural heritage, sexual violence or attacks on civilians. innocent.