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May 20. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The signatory countries of the Treaty of Rome, establishing the International Criminal Court, have denounced this Saturday the “unacceptable” Russian threats by declaring the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, and three magistrates of the institution on their list of “wanted persons”.
The Presidency of the Assembly of States Parties to the CFI “regrets these acts of intimidation and this unacceptable attempt to undermine the mandate of the CFI to investigate, punish and prevent the commission of the most serious international crimes,” it published in a statement.
In addition, countries have declared their “strong support” for the ICC, its elected officials and its staff. “Safeguarding the integrity of the Tribunal, including its judicial and prosecutorial independence, is essential for the performance of its mandate. We reiterate our full confidence in the CFI as an independent and impartial court,” they added.
On Friday, the Russian Interior Ministry announced the inclusion of the British Khan and three ICC judges on its list of wanted persons in response to the “illegal arrest warrant” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicted by the court. to facilitate the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian territory.
The Russian government indicates that both Khan and the magistrates handling the case, Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez, have acted “without grounds of criminal responsibility” by acting against a foreign head of state whose country, to begin with, It has not recognized since 2016 the Rome Statute that serves as the basis for the CFI.
For this reason, the Russian Ministry of the Interior accuses the chief prosecutor and the judges of having adopted, with their order against Putin and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, an illegal decision, contrary to the Convention for the Prevention and the Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, by which “heads of state enjoy absolute immunity from the jurisdiction of foreign states,” according to a statement from the Ministry of the Interior collected by Interfax.
The Ministry supports its decision in Russian law, understanding that the TPI is committing a crime by accusing “clearly innocent” people of committing a particularly serious crime and “attacking a state representative who enjoys diplomatic immunity to complicate international relations.
This decision had been advanced last week by the president of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrikin, after opening a criminal case against the CFI leadership and the judges responsible for that decision, considering that their actions were illegal because, according to Russia, there were no grounds to hold Putin and Lvova-Belova responsible for the crime of “forced child deportation”.
The court, on the other hand, and as it made known in its March order, understands “reasonable grounds” to believe that Putin “has individual criminal responsibility” for these crimes, either for its “direct” commission or for having been incapable of “exercising a adequate control over the civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts”.
The Kremlin has consistently denied that it is forcibly deporting Ukrainian children in the face of accusations made by kyiv and its allies. According to the Ukrainian government, at least 16,000 children have ended up displaced against their will to Russian territory since the beginning of the conflict, while a recent study presented in February by Yale University denounced at least 6,000 Ukrainian children distributed among 40 Russian boarding schools.
The arrest warrants represent the first international charges filed since the start of the conflict and come after months of work by a special investigative team under the CFI’s chief prosecutor. For its issuance it has been necessary for a preliminary panel of judges to accept the validity of the evidence presented.
The possibility that the ICC ends up prosecuting Putin is practically nil for several reasons: the court cannot hear cases ‘in absentia’ of the defendant, Russia withdrew in 2016 from the Rome Statute that serves as the legal foundation for the court, and the The Kremlin has not the slightest intention of handing over any Russian official to the court, as it has reiterated on numerous occasions.
