Moscow opens criminal case over Putin warrant

RT
Mon, 20 Mar 2023 12:00 UTC

© Vincent Isore/MAGO/Global Look Press

The International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands

Russia's investigative committee says the ICC's top prosecutor and its judges acted "illegally"...

The International Criminal Court's (ICC) principal prosecutor and the judges who issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin have become the targets of a criminal case, Russia's Investigative Committee announced on Monday.

In a Telegram post, the committee said that it had opened cases against ICC prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan, as well as judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez.

Khan sent a petition on February 22 to the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber to obtain warrants for the arrest of Putin and Russia's commissioner for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, whom he accused of being responsible for the "illegal deportation of children from Ukraine." His petition was approved by the aforementioned judges. Moscow regards the evacuation as providing the safety of civilians from territories at risk of attacks by Ukrainian troops.

Russia's investigative committee has described the ICC prosecutions as "obviously illegal, since there are no grounds for criminal liability." It also pointed to the 1973 UN Protection of Diplomats Convention which grants heads of state absolute immunity from the jurisdiction of foreign countries.

The committee considers Khan's actions a crime under Russian law for

"knowingly bringing an innocent person to criminal liability, combined with unlawfully accusing a person of committing a grave or especially grave crime with the intention of complicating international relations, attacking a foreign state representative and attempting a deliberately unlawful detention."

Russia has disregarded the ICC warrant as having no legal basis, with ex-president Dmitry Medvedev suggesting it was a sign of the collapse of international law. He also described the ICC as "s**tty and wanted by nobody" and said it had a poor record of holding high-profile suspects accountable, explicit pro-Western bias and had failed to investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Kremlin has officially reacted calmly to the ICC warrant. Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told RIA Novosti on Monday that there are already plenty of "openly hostile manifestations in relation to both our country and our president" and that taking it all "to heart" would not bring anything good.

Comment: The ICC is ineffective and full of deficiencies, unable to investigate or enforce its rulings:

The biggest demonstration of the ICC's impotence was its failed attempt to investigate war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Medvedev stated.

Washington derailed the court's probe. John Bolton, the national security adviser under then-President Donald Trump, mused at the time that "for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead," so Washington will allow it to "die on its own."

Last week's decision by the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber to go after the leader of another nuclear power that likewise refused to recognize its jurisdiction is obviously just for show, Medvedev said, adding that this will only serve to eradicate whatever trust in international institutions remains.

Nations ignore rulings that they perceive as inherently unjust and prefer to make direct agreements between each other, while "stupid decisions of the UN and other structures come apart at the seams."

Medvedev added that one could "imagine a situation" in which the building of the ICC in The Hague could be struck by a Russian hypersonic missile. "This court is just a puny international organization, not a NATO nation's people. They would not dare to start a war over it. No one would even be sorry about it."

Russia is 'unfazed' by Putin's arrest warrant:

The Russian leadership has taken note of the arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin announced by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last week but is not worried by it, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. It is just one of many attacks on Russia and its leader, he explained.

"We take notice [of such things], but if we were to take to heart every hostile action, certainly nothing good would come out of it. We are unfazed and will keep working."

The court acts on the authority of the Rome Statute, an international treaty that Russia never ratified and from which it fully withdrew in 2016. Several other major world powers, including the US, China, and India, do not recognize the ICC either. Washington infamously derailed the court's attempt to investigate war crimes allegedly committed in Iraq and Afghanistan by US troops and their allies under President Donald Trump.

The Russian government dismissed the arrest warrant as irrelevant. Former President Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the National Security Council, called the court earlier on Monday a "puny international organization."