The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, has asked Ukraine and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the death of the Spanish aid worker Emma Igual in an attack that occurred in Ukrainian territory as a possible “war crime”.
Albares has sent letters to the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Karim Khan, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dimitro Kuleba, to ask that both the prosecutor’s office of the court based in The Hague and the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office investigate the case, as he announced in statements in Strasbourg, where this Tuesday he will attend the Debate on the State of the Union of the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen.
In both cases, the minister has conveyed Spain’s willingness to collaborate with the material and human resources that are necessary, as has already been done by Spanish forensic experts who have been helping the Ukrainian authorities in the investigation of other cases since they occurred. the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Asked what the Government will do if Russian responsibility for the attack that caused Igual’s death is proven, Albares has maintained that it is up to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office and the TPI headed by Khan “to rule on the crimes of war” that are committed daily in Ukraine and not to him.
However, the death of the director of the NGO Road to Relief, “even if indirectly, is the responsibility of the person who launched the war of aggression against Ukraine,” he stressed, without mentioning at any time the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
But as far as “legal responsibility” is concerned, he has stressed, “in order to do things well and for responsibility to be clearly established, let the ICC Prosecutor’s Office and the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office do it,” which are the ones with jurisdiction, and in this way there can be no “doubts about it.”
Albares has said that he has conveyed to the mother of the aid worker the Government’s will to “go to the end” to clarify her death, which occurred last Saturday when the vehicle in which she was traveling was hit by a Russian projectile nearby. from Chasiv Yar, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Canadian volunteer Anthony ‘Tonko’ Ihnat also died in the attack and two others were injured. As explained this Monday by the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, the NGO vehicle was disintegrated. This Tuesday, the Government imposed the Grand Cross of Isabel la Católica on Igual posthumously.
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