Russia puts ICC chief prosecutor on its “wanted persons” list for attempting Putin’s “illegal arrest”

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May 19. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The Russian Ministry of the Interior has announced this Friday the inclusion of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, as well as three magistrates of the institution, on its list of “wanted persons” for issuing an “arrest warrant illegal” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused by the court of facilitating 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, has not recognized since 2016 the Rome Statute that serves as the basis for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

For this reason, the Russian Ministry of the Interior accuses the chief prosecutor and the judges of having adopted, with their February 2022 order against Putin and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, an illegal decision, contrary to the Convention for the Prevention and 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 such 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”.