Russia opens criminal case against the ICC

The Russian state investigative committee has today announced it had opened a criminal case against the International Criminal Court prosecutor and judges who issued an arrest warrant for the Russian President, Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges.

The move was a symbolic gesture of defiance, three days after the ICC accused Vladmir Putin and his children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.

The state Investigative Committee said there were no grounds for criminal liability on its president’s part, and heads of state enjoy absolute immunity under a 1973 UN convention.

The ICC prosecutor’s actions showed signs of being crimes under Russian law, the committee said, including knowingly accusing an innocent person of a crime.

The prosecutor and judges were also suspected of “preparing an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection, in order to complicate international relations”.

The Kremlin has also called the issuing of the ICC’s warrant outrageous and legally void, as Russia is not a signatory to the treaty that created the ICC and the court’s move was a sign of the “clear hostility” that exists against Russia and against Putin personally.

Dolupo Balogun

Written by BoomRadioNG