Russia continues its tug-of-war with the International Criminal Court. The Interior Ministry announced that it had included the president of the international judicial body, the Polish Piotr Hofmanski, on the wanted list. “Wanted on the basis of an article of the Russian Criminal Code”, we read in the information posted on the ministry’s website, although this article is not specified. There is no doubt, however, that this is a response to the arrest order issued by the ICC last March against Vladimir Putin on charges of crimes of war.
In addition to Hofmanski, the Russian authorities have issued arrest orders for two of his deputies: judges Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza and Bertram Schmitt. But similar measures had been taken in the spring against other ICC judges, including the prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan.
The conflict between Moscow and the ICC began on March 17, when the International Court, whose jurisdiction Russia does not recognize (like the United States), issued an arrest order against the Russian president and the commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of the “war crime of illegal deportation of population (children) and illegal transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia”. Charges rejected by the Moscow authorities, according to which the children transferred from Ukraine were not moved against the wishes of their relatives but were brought to safety by being evacuated from areas subject to bombings or other violence resulting from the conflict. The arrest order against him has limited Putin’s ability to travel abroad to attend international events. Among other things, the president was unable to travel to South Africa to participate in the Brics countries summit last month. But the first mission outside national borders after the restrictive measure is scheduled for October, with a visit to China, another country that is not a member of the international tribunal. Although Moscow’s accusations against President Hofmanski and his two deputies have not been made public, it is reasonable to expect that they will not differ greatly from those already made against prosecutor Karim Khan and two judges included like him on the judiciary’s wanted list Russian. These include “an attack on a representative of a foreign state under international protection with the aim of complicating international relations” and the indictment of “a person who is known to be innocent”.
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