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2023-03-23 International-UN-NGOs
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Why 'Putin's Arrest Warrant' Appeared Right Now
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] The decision taken by the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of the Russian president was caused, firstly, by the bureaucratic tug-of-war within Europe, and secondly, by the PR tasks facing Washington. Legally, this looks even more helpless than it could be, but it solves the listed tasks perfectly.
The idea to arrange a trial of Russia is one of the fundamental ones in the strategy of isolating our country. It has been thrown into the information space from the first day of the NWO. And at first, the International Criminal Court (ICC) seemed to be the most suitable platform for this.
Continued from Page 5
According to experts, recently the ICC found itself "in a deep crisis of its own legitimacy," and it really needed a new high-profile case. Not descending from the front pages of all newspapers, Ukraine was very suitable as an occasion.
The International Criminal Court has been operating in the Netherlands since 2002. His specialization is the prosecution of those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes and crimes of aggression. It has 18 replaceable judges, at least 11 of them can be called representatives of countries unfriendly to Russia or states that are dependent on such countries.
The international treaty that established this organization (the "Statute of Rome") has been ratified by 123 states, which do not include Russia, the United States and China. Neither Iran, nor Belarus, nor one of the largest powers in the world, India, is also a member of the ICC.
Over the two decades of its existence, the court has involved 32 people as defendants. All of them were representatives of African countries. Perhaps the most famous defendants include the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Neither one nor the other made it to court.
The "efficiency" of the International Criminal Court is best described by the figures characterizing its activities. Or rather, inactivity.
Of the 32 defendants, 11 are at large, nine have been acquitted or have had their charges dropped. There are several more cases in the pre-trial stage, covered with the orphan wording "caused by the subpoena." There are exactly three convictions, and one of them is overturned.
Meanwhile, this remarkable organization has a presidium, departments, chambers, a secretariat, and even a whole prosecutor's office. And all this colossus was quietly wiped away when the United States refused to cooperate and imposed sanctions on the founder of the ICC and the prosecutor.
Considering the huge apparatus of the court that needs to be financed (and a significant share of the budget is formed by Europe), this institution seemed quite manageable to the participants of the anti-Russian coalition.
Last spring, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan fully met the expectations of the West when he went to Bucha and fully supported the Ukrainian version, which could not stand up to an objective and impartial examination either then, or even more so now.
But gradually the ICC ceased to seem like a suitable venue for a show trial. There are several reasons.
Firstly, it was impossible to condemn Russia “by the whole world”, and there are enough judges in the ICC whose nationality does not inspire confidence in the “correctness” of their assessments. Given that all key aspects of the prosecution can be legally interpreted in one direction or another, political allegiances and commitments in this case play a decisive role.
Secondly, from a legal point of view, the biggest problem was created by Ukraine itself, which, like Russia, has not ratified the Rome Statute, which means that it is not under the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Lawyers sympathizing with Ukraine believe that the two declarations adopted by Kiev (the first on its recognition of the jurisdiction of the ICC over the events on the Maidan, the second on the events around the Crimea and Donbass) can to some extent extend the jurisdiction of the ICC to Ukraine. But as for the notorious “Russian aggression”, there is a direct article of the Rome Statute that the ICC “ does not have jurisdiction over the crime of aggression committed (…) on the territory of a state that is not a party to the Statute .”
By the way, why Kyiv stubbornly refuses to ratify the Rome Statute, contrary to the obligations stipulated in the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, is a separate issue.
Most likely, they perfectly understand that the wind can blow in the other direction, and today's favorites of the anti-Russian public may find themselves in the dock. But be that as it may, the most convenient reason for the ICC to accuse Russia is outside its jurisdiction.
Understanding this, Kyiv began to insist that a special tribunal should be created to condemn the “Russian aggression”. And the original idea to condemn Russia through the ICC gradually faded into the background.
The court realized that the creation of a separate tribunal would finally bury it somewhere in the backyard of the European bureaucracy. The ICC prosecutor said at the end of last year that the idea of creating a separate tribunal is harmful to international law. But few people imagined that the ICC would decide to immediately issue an arrest warrant against the current president of Russia.
This decision is a strong instrumental move that raises the bureaucratic weight of the ICC, staking out priority in the Ukrainian issue. Now the creation of a separate tribunal to investigate the Ukrainian situation, firstly, will look strange, secondly, it will completely confuse the situation, and thirdly, it is simply too expensive: each such process costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
It doesn't matter that the accusations of "kidnapping" seem strange from both a legal and a human point of view. In this case, first of all, the hardware logic is important, and in this logic the ICC won, getting rid of a possible competitor even before its birth.
There is another reason for such a sudden activity of the ICC - the case of the explosions at the Nord Stream. After the publication of the results of the investigation by the American journalist Seymour Hersh, which dealt with involvement in undermining the leadership of the CIA and specific individuals in the Biden administration, Washington failed to choose a convincing line of defense. Stories about the involvement of some noble Ukrainian avengers or about the fact that Russia itself blew up the gas pipelines were not successful. Gradually, the European public became more and more interested in the matter, and it was necessary to urgently switch its attention. A warrant for the arrest of Putin himself is an excellent occasion; for an uninitiated audience, this topic is much more interesting.
As for the legal side. According to prosecutor Karim Khan himself, the charges are "preliminary."
"According to the complex procedure at the ICC, the prosecutor must request the Pre-Trial Chamber to issue an arrest warrant or a summons to appear. At the same time, the chamber must make sure that there are “reasonable grounds” for believing that a person has committed a crime and arrest is necessary to ensure attendance at a trial (which is not even scheduled) or to prevent the commission of a crime (what?). No evidence of "reasonable grounds" was presented. There is an obvious pseudo-legal fake. Clumsy work," said one of the international lawyers in a conversation with a REGNUM correspondent.
But even if suddenly a warrant for the arrest of the first person of the Russian Federation appears, the next question is: who should arrest the Russian president?
By law, these are countries that are parties to the Rome Statute. They are obliged to comply with all decisions of the ICC, including the arrest on warrants issued against citizens of other countries who find themselves on their territory.
But each country has enough legal arguments to make any decision. As a rule, all of them will be in the plane of questions - did the ICC have the right to issue such an order and whether a country party to the Rome Statute is obliged to comply with it.
Questions about the validity of the warrant arise for several reasons.
Firstly, Russia not only failed to ratify the Rome Statute, but also in 2016 withdrew its signature from this document. The ICC, on the other hand, has jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of a state that has accepted the jurisdiction of the court.
However, the jurisdiction of the ICC also extends to crimes committed in the territory of a state party to the Rome Statute. In this case, everyone, including citizens of any third countries, falls under the jurisdiction of the organization.
At one time, the fact of Afghanistan's participation in the Rome Statute became the basis for the threat of prosecution of US military personnel for their actions in this country. True, immediately after that, US President Donald Trump reacted as harshly as possible and applied personal sanctions to the staff of the ICC prosecutor's office, after which the "independent" and "impartial" court immediately changed its mind.
But Afghanistan was a party to the Rome Statute, but Ukraine never ratified it!
A separate declaration by Kyiv on partial recognition of the jurisdiction of the ICC in connection with the events in Crimea and Donbass can be treated differently. Here, each country will have room for interpretation depending on political sympathies.
Finally, the third question is: can the ICC by its decision revoke the immunity of the head of state?
In international law, the customary rule is that heads of state, heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs have immunity "by virtue of office".
However, according to the International Criminal Court itself, here we are talking about immunities from any national courts, not international ones. And in this respect, the ICC once supported the International Court of Justice.
But if a state party to the Rome Statute does not want to arrest the head of state, the issue of immunities for senior officials of countries that have not recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC is decided differently.
Here we can recall that in 2017 the ICC itself agreed with South Africa, which refused to arrest the President of Sudan al-Bashir, who arrived in the country (the ICC issued two arrest warrants against him at once), on the grounds that Sudan does not participate in the Rome Statute.
And in this matter, everything rests on desire and political expediency: the states parties to the Rome Statute are not required to arrest the head of state that has not recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC. Although they can.
Bottom line: the decision taken by the ICC to issue a warrant for the arrest of the Russian president is most likely caused, firstly, by bureaucratic tug-of-war within Europe, and secondly, by the PR tasks facing Washington. Legally, it looks even more helpless than it could be, but it perfectly solves the listed tasks.
The accusations that this court was able to bring have no legal perspective and look like "clumsy work", but the very fact of such accusations can give the state concerned the right to try to arrest the head of Russia. At the same time, no one will have the obligation to carry out such an arrest.
March 22, 2023
Alexey Sharavsky
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Posted by badanov 2023-03-23 00:00||
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