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The ICC issues arrest warrants against three people for war crimes in the conflict between Russia and Georgia

The ICC issues arrest warrants against three people for war crimes in the conflict between Russia and Georgia

30 (EUROPE PRESS)

The trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued this Thursday arrest warrants against three people suspected of war crimes during the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, considering that there are “reasonable indications” to consider that they would have been involved in these acts.

The agency has indicated in a statement that those affected are Mikhail Mindzaev, Gamlet Guchmazov and David Snakoev, while detailing that “the arrest warrants are related to conduct during the armed conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008.”

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that civilians perceived to be ethnic Georgians were arrested in South Ossetia and subsequently detained, ill-treated and held in harsh conditions in Tskhinvali before being used as a negotiating tool by Russia and the ‘de facto’ authorities of South Ossetia for an exchange of prisoners and detainees,” he said.

“As a result of the exchange, the detainees were forced to leave South Ossetia,” he stressed.

Mindzaev has been identified as a former police officer within the Russian Ministry of the Interior and as Minister of the Interior of the ‘de facto’ authorities of South Ossetia between 2005 and October 31, 2008. Guchmazov was head of the aforementioned center of detention during the period in which these acts were committed and Sanakoev was the presidential representative for Human Rights of the South Ossetian administration.

For this reason, Trial Chamber I of the ICC has requested that a request for cooperation be prepared for the arrest and surrender of the suspects, while asking countries and international organizations to cooperate with the court to this end.

The court opened an investigation into the conflict in 2016. Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war in 2008 for control of the regions of North Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Moscow recognizes as independent, despite the lack of recognition by the international community.


“AN IMPORTANT STEP”

The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) recalled this Thursday in a statement that the measure is part of the first public results of the six-year investigation in court and that it is “an important step.”

“The ICC orders are an important step, long overdue, to keep those implicated in the campaign of violence that forced nearly 20,000 ethnic Georgians from their homes to account,” said Deputy Director of the Division. of Europe and Central Asia of HRW, Rachel Denber.

The organization has thus recounted that, in their investigations, they discovered that during the conflict, after Georgian forces withdrew from South Ossetia on August 10, Russian-backed South Ossetian forces “deliberately and systematically” destroyed villages. of Georgian ethnicity that had been administered by the Georgian Government.

Forces looted, beat, threatened and illegally detained numerous ethnic Georgian civilians, and killed several, based on the residents’ ethnicity and imputed political affiliations.

In this sense, the NGO has stressed that they concluded that there was ethnic cleansing in these villages. “HRW also documented indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks by Georgian and Russian forces during the conflict, which may have constituted violations of the laws of war,” it added.

Specifically, these attacks would have been carried out with rocket launch systems in civilian areas. In several cases, Russian forces used indiscriminate air, artillery and tank attacks, killing and wounding many civilians.

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