[ad_1]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday delivered a speech in The Hague, home of the International Criminal Court and a longtime symbol of international law and justice, as he pushed for a special tribunal to prosecute Russia’s leaders for war crimes.
“We all want to see a different Vladimir in The Hague,” Mr. Zelensky said, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. In March, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Mr. Putin and other officials on charges of war crimes for their involvement in the removal of children from Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky has argued for months for the creation of a special court that would run parallel to the ICC’s case against Mr. Putin and others. The proposal, which has been discussed since at least July, has gathered steam in recent weeks, with support from the United States, foreign ministers from the Group of 7 industrialized nations and many European leaders.
The crime of aggression, the legal doctrine that most directly holds Russian leaders to invade Ukraine, cannot be brought against Russia by the ICC because it lacks jurisdiction.
First recognized as an international crime at the famous Nuremberg Trials of the Nazis, the crime of aggression was defined as being committed by a leader – “a person in a position to effectively control or direct the political or military actions of a state” – by participating in “the use of armed forces by a state against its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of other countries” in violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
Beth Van Schaack, the State Department’s ambassador for global criminal justice, said last month in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the trial would mark “the first prosecution of a crime of aggression in the modern era.”
In March, the European Union said it was creating a center for prosecuting cases of aggression in The Hague to coordinate the collection of evidence and investigations into Russian aggression in Ukraine.
[ad_2]
Source link