Russia starts a criminal case against ICC judges because they issued a warrant to arrest Putin. Reuters reports that on Monday, Russia...
Russia starts a criminal case against ICC judges because they issued a warrant to arrest Putin.
Reuters reports that on Monday, Russia's top investigation agency said it had started a criminal case against the prosecutor and judges at the International Criminal Court who issued a warrant for the arrest of President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of committing war crimes.
Three days earlier, the ICC had accused Putin and his children's commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova of a war crime for sending children from Ukraine to Russia. This move was a symbolic act of resistance.
The state Investigative Committee said there was no reason for Putin to be charged with a crime, and a U.N. convention from 1973 said that heads of state had complete protection from prosecution.
The ICC investigator did things that looked like crimes under Russian law, the committee said, like accusing a person of a crime who wasn't guilty.
The prosecutor and judges were also accused of "planning an attack on a representative of a foreign state who had international protection in order to mess up international relations."
The Kremlin has said that the warrant is wrong, but it is not valid because Russia did not sign the treaty that made the ICC possible.
On Monday, it said that the court's decision showed that there is "clear hostility" toward Russia and Putin personally.
Prosecutor Karim Khan and judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez are being looked into by the Russians.
The Russian statement said, "The criminal prosecution is obviously wrong because there is no reason to be charged with a crime."
The move by the ICC forces the 123 countries that are part of the court to arrest Putin and send him to The Hague to stand trial if he steps foot on their land.
Putin is unlikely to take that risk, and Russia does not extradite its own people, but the rare move against a sitting president was an important symbolic step to make him take responsibility for the effects of his invasion of Ukraine.
Since the war began almost 13 months ago, Ukraine says that more than 16,000 children have been taken illegally to Russia or areas controlled by Russia.
Russia has said in public that it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia as part of an effort to help orphaned and abandoned children in the war zone.
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