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South Africa will have a chance this summer to enforce an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin – and the court’s top prosecutor told lawmakers on Thursday he was confident the Commonwealth country “will do the right thing.”
Karim Khan appeared before the Canadian House of Commons foreign affairs committee hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to ICC judges in The Hague in the Netherlands, where he said he believed Putin would be convicted of war crimes.
Zelenskyy urged the global community to hold Putin accountable and told ICC judges that the Russian leader “deserves to be punished for (his) criminal actions right here in the capital of international law.”
In March, the ICC issued a war crimes arrest warrant for Putin and accused him of personal responsibility for kidnapping children from Ukraine. It is the first time a global court has issued a warrant against the leader of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
In August, Putin is scheduled to attend the BRICS Summit, an assembly of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that is considered the most important geopolitical rival to the G7 bloc of developed countries.
As a signatory to the ICC’s Rome Statute, South Africa is expected to implement a war crimes warrant and arrest Putin. That led to an intense political debate in the country. Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s Minister of Justice, complained publicly on Wednesday that the ICC was inconsistent when deciding which crimes to take into account.
Khan told a committee of Canadian MPs on Thursday that South Africa is a respected country and “hasn’t been dragged kicking and screaming” into supporting the ICC in the past.
“There is a more recent statement of recognition by South Africa of its obligations under the Rome Statute,” Khan said. “He has noted that he understands the responsibility. I don’t think he needs any guidance from me.”
Khan said he was reluctant to state the matter publicly, adding that countries that successfully fought to end the apartheid racist system had the right to make their own decisions.
“I think he understands his responsibilities and I’m sure he’ll do the right thing, and I’ll leave him alone,” Khan said.
But Lamola suggested in his remarks to local media in South Africa that his government was looking for an exit.
“We will explore various options on how the Rome Statute is sold in our country, including the option to extend customary diplomatic immunity for visiting heads of state in our country,” Lamola told the BusinessDay publication.
The ICC has set up an office in Kyiv and is working closely with Ukrainian prosecutors to document war crimes cases, which number in the tens of thousands, said Yuliya Kovaliv, Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada.
More than 84,000 war crimes are under investigation, Kovaliv told the Senate foreign affairs committee on Thursday. The arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, are related to the forced transfer of children from occupied parts of Ukraine to Russia, where they were assimilated.
Ukraine estimates that more than 19,500 Ukrainian children were illegally abducted and deported to Russia, and that only 328 have been returned.
“According to the evidence, he was forced to study [the] The Russian language, which changed history, and also recorded a lot of it for the Russian propaganda campaign,” Kovaliv told the senate committee.
It is not only a Ukrainian concern, she said.
“Justice for this crime is not only necessary for the families who lost their loved ones, but justice will serve the critical interests of global justice to prevent other dictators from committing these crimes,” added Kovaliv.
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