1970-01-01 02:00:00
Due to the lifting of confidentiality by the International Criminal Court (TPI) of the request for the arrest of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, jurists specialized in the Law of Nations — also called Public International Law — began to make their interpretations.
On February 24, the International Prosecutor’s Office (MPI) asked the ICC to order the precautionary arrests of Putin and the Russian national secretary for children, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.
In the MPI’s accusations, the continued commission of war crimes was alleged., with deportations of children from occupied Ukrainian areas and sending them to the Russian Federation. The MPI justified the request and listed crimes typified in article 8. of the Rome Statute.
Emergency exit
Only seven UN countries have not subscribed to the Rome Statute, which instituted the International Criminal Court in July 18, 1998. They are: China, United States, Israel, Turkey, India, Philippines and Sri Lanka. In other words, they jumped out.
For the national States embedded in the jurisdiction of the ICC, a wide emergency exit door was provided in the Rome Statute. The so-called “opting out” clause, i.e. waiving acceptance of the ICC.
As soon as Putin’s secret service agents grasped the MPI’s intention, Russia formally informed the ICC not to accept its jurisdiction. That is, not accepting any type of decision of the Court: opting out.
Russophobic
Despite no longer having jurisdiction, the ICC, in a process under secrecy (top secret), ended up accepting the requests of the MPI and imposed the precautionary arrests of Putin and Lvova-Belova, on March 17.
Russia then began the pressure. He began to publicize the suspicion of the head of the MPI and the president of the ICC. They would be two “Russophobes”.
Russophobes by presumption, as the president of the ICC is Polish and the head of the MPI is English.
And, to reach the ICC and obtain a nine-year term as a judge or prosecutor, member countries of the United Nations must, politically, engage in elections controlled by the UN Security Council.
Faced with Russian pressure and the “dirty game” referring to the duo identified as Russophobic, the ICC has just lifted the secrecy of the arrest process.
International right
For respected prosecutor Carla del Ponte, Russia was no longer subject to the ICC when the two precautionary arrests were imposed.
Del Ponte was the first prosecutor of the ICC, responsible for the prosecutions in cases of war crimes, against humanity and genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. She was also a prosecutor in Switzerland and managed to seize money laundered by mobsters in banks in the Swiss region of Ticino.
She points out, as a way to hold Putin accountable, the formation, by deliberation of UN Member States, of an international court for the Russian warlike invasion of Ukraine, with violation of sovereignty and human rights.
The ICC did not decide arbitrarily, argue some European jurists. There was the precedent that occurred in Sudan, involving the corrupt dictator Omar al-Bashir. This mentioned soldier presided over Sudan from 1989 to 2019.
Sudan, as Russia has now done, started to not accept the ICC. And the exit also occurred before the arrest decree.
At the ICC, the case of Sudan and involving the criminal prosecution of the human rights violator and corrupt dictator al-Bashir, has been archived. And archived for having lost the objective, because the dictator lost the presidential mandate.
Gambian-born MPI prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wanted to hold US presidents accountable for war crimes in Afghanistan. It was not successful, as the US, since the first consideration of the creation of an ICC, was against it. That is, they are not subject to the ICC.
Domestically, then-president Donald Trump imposed restrictive sanctions on Bensouda’s entry into the US.
Representations of the Palestinian Authority against Israel also did not go forward for the reason that the Hebrew country never accepted or joined the ICC.
International law is informed by the principle of consensus between countries. Countries that have not consented to submit to its jurisdiction are not included in the ICC.
Intense propaganda war
This week, the propaganda war promises to be intense. Putin has been branded an “outcast and fugitive”.
There are experts in international law who support the obligation of compliance with the two arrest warrants by countries that are part of the ICC.
They would have to comply with the international arrest warrant if Putin enters the borders of these member states.
But, the aforementioned Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was never arrested and handed over to the ICC when he set foot in several countries.
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