18″ March “2023
Situation is ‘still in the hands of the prosecutor’: ICC
ICC President, Judge Piotr Hofmanski, said the decision to issue an arrest warrant against the Russian president is “still in the hands of the prosecutor”.
“So far, there were two requests for arrest warrants, and on the basis of these requests, the response will be issued, but it obviously doesn’t mean it is the end of the situation of the cases,” he said.
The judge added that the prosecutor could form cases of new allegations against Putin, thus expanding the warrants.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin on war crime allegations
The Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday the warrant was issued over Putin’s suspected involvement in the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes,” added the court, which has no police force of its own to enforce warrants.
The ICC also issued a warrant for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the office of the Russian president on similar allegations
Russia, which denies committing atrocities since it invaded Ukraine in February last year, does not recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction and does not extradite its nationals.
“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Telegram channel after the ICC’s announcement.
“Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and bears no obligations under it.”
But ICC President Piotr Hofmanski told Al Jazeera it was “completely irrelevant” that Russia had not ratified the Rome Statute.
“According to the ICC statute, which has 123 state parties, two-thirds of the whole international community, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in the territory of a state party or a state which has accepted its jurisdiction,” he said. “Ukraine has accepted the ICC twice – in 2014 and then in 2015.”
Hofmanski said 43 states had referred “the situation in Ukraine to the court, which means they have formally triggered our jurisdiction.
“The court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on anyone on the territory of Ukraine from November 2013 onwards regardless of nationality of the alleged perpetrators
The warrants came a day after a United Nations-backed inquiry accused Russia of committing wide-ranging war crimes in Ukraine, including the forced deportations of children in areas it controls.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin hailed the ICC’s decision.
Russia’s parliament speaker says US behind ICC arrest warrants
Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of Russia’s president, has said the ICC decision was evidence of Western “hysteria”.
“Yankees, hands off Putin!” he wrote on Telegram. “We regard any attacks on the President of the Russian Federation as aggression against our country.”
A US-backed report by Yale University researchers last month said Moscow has held at least 6,000 Ukrainian children at sites in Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
The report identified at least 43 camps and other facilities where Ukrainian children have been held that were part of a “large-scale systematic network” operated by Moscow since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“The world received a signal that the Russian regime is criminal and its leadership and henchmen will be held accountable,” he said in a statement on social media. “This is a historic decision for Ukraine and the entire system of international law.”
James Bays, Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, described the ICC’s move as “very serious”.
He said there were many who welcomed the announcement but there were others who raised questioned whether this would be a problem for diplomacy going forward
“Now you have the head of state of Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, who is now a wanted man by the ICC,” he said.
“This is going to be a headache for some of those who are going to have to deal with President Putin – how are other countries going to deal with him?” Bays added. “Will President Putin be able to travel?”
EU’s Borrell welcomes ICC warrant against Putin
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has hailed the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin as an “important decision” for international justice and Ukraine’s people.
“We have always made clear at the European Union, that those responsible for the illegal aggression against Ukraine must be brought to justice, and this International Criminal Court issue is just the start in the process of accountability,” Borrell said.
ICC decision ‘null and void’, Kremlin says
The Kremlin says it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court after it issues an arrest warrant against Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the questions raised by the ICC “outrageous and unacceptable” and that any decisions of the court were “null and void” concerning Russia.
Asked if Putin now feared travelling to countries that recognise the ICC, Peskov said: “I have nothing to add on this subject. That’s all we want to say.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES