The official spokesman of the International Criminal Court, Fadi Al-Abdullah, announced that the decision to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a conviction, but rather a call to appear and investigate.
In statements to Agency from The Hague on Friday evening, he said the implementation of Putin’s arrest depends on international cooperation, adding that the Russian president is a war crimes suspect.
Disseminate the memorandum to the Member States
While he clarified that countries that are not members of the court are not bound by its decisions, stressing that Putin’s arrest warrant will be distributed to member states.
And he added: “We have the right to ask any member state to arrest Putin on its territory.”
Furthermore, he confirmed that the court is investigating in impartially on the cases of Ukraine.
Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights
Interestingly, the International Criminal Court had announced in earlier, on Friday, the issuance of an arrest warrant against Putin on charges of committing war crimes in Ukraine since the start of the Russian military operation in February 2022.
“Today, 17 March 2023, the Preliminary Chamber II of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two people in relation to the situation in Ukraine: Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Bilova’, who is the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, he said in a note.
“illegal deportation”
He also added that they may be involved in “war crimes, represented in the illegal deportation of the population (children) and the illegal transfer of the population (children) from the territory of Ukraine to Russia”.
He also added that “there are substantial reasons to believe that Putin bears personal criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, because (in firstly) committed these acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others… (e in secondly) failed to adequately supervise the military subordinates who committed the acts or allowed them to be committed”.
“null” and “insignificant”
Commenting on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “Russia, like a number of other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and therefore, from a legal point of view, the decisions of this court are invalid”.
In turn, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote via Telegram that “the decisions of the International Criminal Court have no importance for our country”.
And he added: “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it”, explaining that Moscow “does not cooperate” with the court. He also added that “arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are legally invalid” for Russia.
Interestingly, the Rome Statute is the founding text of the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
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