A team from the International Criminal Court has left for the “Ukraine region” today to launch a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes, the ICC chief prosecutor told Reuters.
Their departure came hours after prosecutor Karim Khan said he would begin gathering evidence as part of a formal investigation into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
“Yesterday I formed a team and today they are leaving for the area,” Khan said. “It is a team consisting of investigators, lawyers, but also people with special experience in business planning.”
Hahn added that the ICC would look into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – offenses under the jurisdiction of the Court – from all parties involved in the war.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a member of the ICC, and Moscow does not recognize the Court, which was established in 1997 by the Rome Statute and began its work in 2002, based in The Hague.
Although not a member of the ICC, Ukraine signed a declaration in 2014 giving jurisdiction to the Court of Justice to investigate alleged serious crimes committed in its territory from 2014 onwards, regardless of the nationality of the suspected perpetrators.
The ICC, which has 123 member states, prosecutes those responsible for the worst atrocities when a country cannot or does not want to do so.
“The law of war continues to apply and we have clear jurisdiction,” Khan said. “This is a reminder to all sides, to all parts of the war, that they must act in accordance with the laws of war.”
Asked about bomb blasts and artillery attacks in Ukrainian cities, the ICRC chief prosecutor said: “Any side directly targeting civilians or facilities, civilian buildings is committing a crime under the Rome Statute and this is international humanitarian law.” .
The investigation will also look back to 2014, when Russia occupied the Crimean region of Ukraine and began providing support to armed separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The prosecutor’s annual report for 2020, based on preliminary investigations, reported suspected war crimes, including killings and torture in Crimea, and attacks on civilians, torture, killings and rapes in eastern Ukraine.
If war crimes are found to have been committed in Ukraine, Khan said, the tribunal will follow the evidence to the top of the chain of command, to the highest levels of political and military office.
“Anyone involved in the war must realize that they are not allowed to commit crimes,” he said.
Source: AMPE
Source: Capital
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