The official spokesman for the International Criminal Court, Fadi Al-Abdullah, announced that the decision to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a condemnation, but rather an invitation to appear and investigate.
He said in statements to Al-Arabiya / Al-Hadath from The Hague on Friday evening that the implementation of Putin’s arrest depends on international cooperation, adding that the Russian president is suspected of war crimes.
Circulating the memorandum to the member states
While he made it clear that countries that are not members of the court are not bound by its decisions, pointing out that Putin’s arrest warrant will be circulated to member states.
And he added, “We have the right to ask any member state to arrest Putin on its soil.”
In addition, he confirmed that the court investigates Ukraine’s cases impartially.
Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights
It is noteworthy that the International Criminal Court had announced earlier, Friday, the issuance of an arrest warrant against Putin on charges of committing war crimes in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian military operation in February 2022.
“Today, March 17, 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two individuals in connection with the situation in Ukraine: Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms. Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Bilova,” who is the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia, it said in a statement.
“illegal deportation”
It also added that they may be involved in “war crimes, represented in the illegal deportation of the population (children) and the illegal transfer of the population (children) from the territory of Ukraine to Russia.”
It also added that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears personal criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, because (first) he committed these acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others… (and second) because he did not adequately control the military subordinates who committed the acts or permitted them to be committed.”
“null” and “insignificant”
Commenting on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “Russia, like a number of other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of this court, and therefore, from a legal point of view, the decisions of this court are invalid.”
In turn, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, wrote via Telegram that “the decisions of the International Criminal Court are of no importance to our country.”
And she added, “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it,” explaining that Moscow “does not cooperate” with the court. It also added that the “arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are legally invalid” for Russia.
It is noteworthy that the Rome Statute is the founding text of the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
