South Africa will have the chance this summer to execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the court’s top lawyer told lawmakers on Thursday he hoped the Commonwealth would “do the right thing.”
Karim Khan appeared before the Canadian House of Commons foreign affairs committee hours after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke before ICC judges in The Hague, Netherlands.
Zelenskyy urged the international community to hold Putin accountable, telling ICC judges that Russia’s leader “deserves to be punished for (his) crimes in the capital of international law.”
In March, the ICC issued a war crimes arrest warrant for Putin, charging him with personal responsibility for the kidnapping of Ukrainian children. United Nations This is the first time that the International Court has issued an arrest warrant against one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
In August, Putin is scheduled to attend the so-called BRICS summit, a gathering of nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) considered the main geopolitical rival of the G7 bloc of leading advanced economies.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute of the ICC, South Africa is expected to invoke the war crimes arrest warrant and arrest Putin. This has unleashed an intense political debate in the country. South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola complained publicly on Wednesday that the ICC has been inconsistent in deciding which crimes deserve attention.
Khan told a four-party group of Canadian parliamentarians on Thursday that South Africa was a respectable country and had not been “kicked and hollered” into supporting the ICC in the past.
“There have been recent reports of South Africa accepting its obligations under the Rome Statute,” Khan said. “They are on record saying they are aware of those responsibilities. I don’t think they need any training from me.”
Reluctant to press the issue publicly, Khan said a country that had successfully fought to end the racist apartheid system had the right to make its own decisions.
“I think they are very aware of their responsibilities and I am confident that they will do the right thing, and I think I will leave it at that,” Khan said.
But Lamola suggested in his comments to local media in South Africa that his government was looking for a way out.
“We will explore various options for how the Rome Statute has developed in our country, including the option to extend customary diplomatic immunity to visiting heads of state,” Lamola told Business Day.
The ICC has set up an office in kyiv and is working closely with Ukrainian prosecutors to document tens of thousands of war crimes cases, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada Yulia Kovaliv said.
More than 84,000 war crimes are under investigation, Kovalev told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday. The arrest warrant for Putin and Maria Alekseevna Lavova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, relates to the forcible transfer of children from the occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia, where they are being assimilated.
Ukraine estimates that more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been illegally kidnapped and deported to Russia, of whom only 328 have returned.
“According to sources, they were forced to learn [the] The Russian language edited history, and many of them were filmed for Russian propaganda campaigns,” Kovalev told the Senate committee.
It is not just a Ukrainian concern, he said.
“Justice for these crimes is not only needed for families who have lost loved ones, but justice will serve the important interests of global justice to prevent any dictator from committing such crimes,” Kovalev added.
