Anabela Alves, a jurist, participated in the trial of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Court (ICC) between 2002 and 2006. Now, 17 years later, she believes that another world leader, Vladimir Putin, may even sit in the chair himself. the dock in The Hague for war crimes committed in Ukraine. But for that to happen, the Kremlin leader must either make a misstep or an internal movement must bring him to international justice.
This Friday, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and another for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children, an action defined as a war crime. Anabela Alves believes that, if it occurs, the arrests could even occur in Russia “if there is opposition” in the country.
“Any militia, military or police force can detain one of these two defendants and hand them over to forces on the ground in Ukraine to take them to The Hague.” Even so, “on any trip abroad they run the risk” of being arrested.
It is a hypothesis, points out the lawyer, which makes any displacement of Putin very difficult, since he has to have “air permission to travel.” Analyzing the international scene, the Belarusian ally Lukashenko is one of the few destinations that the Russian leader can have, but it is also a country where the ICC cannot act.
The same cannot be said of Ukraine, because although Russia does not recognize the Rome Statute – which gave rise to the ICC – this does not prevent Russian officials from being tried: “They are committing crimes in a country that has recognized the jurisdiction of the court, against Ukrainian citizens who recognized the authority of the court”.
An example of this is what happened with the Americans, who also do not recognize the ICC, because “they did not want their soldiers to be investigated for possible war crimes committed in Afghanistan.”
Even so, they remained the target of international justice, at the initiative of prosecutor Karim Khan and others before him, for “crimes committed by international forces, whether British or American, in Afghanistan.”
If he is indeed brought to justice in The Hague and the crimes of which Putin is accused are proven, the Russian president could be sentenced to a prison term of up to 30 years or even spend the rest of his life in prison. . For now, in addition to the deportation of children, massacres that allegedly took place on Ukrainian soil are also under ICC scrutiny, something that could aggravate the sentence.
Anabela Alves points out that, even if nothing is proven, today’s decision already has the merit of putting pressure on Putin to return the children; “The biggest affliction for Ukrainians right now is to recover. The numbers are huge: around 200,000 children have been deported.”
Source: TSF
