The question was on the menu of the discussions, Friday February 17, during a visit of the general prosecutor of kyiv, Andriy Kostin, in Brussels. Ukraine pleads for the establishment of a special tribunal to judge Russia’s aggression, while the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction in this specific case.
With our correspondent in Brussels, Laure Broulard
The ICC has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine, but not over the crime of aggression, since neither Moscow nor Kyiv have ratified the amendments to the Treaty of Rome that define and frame it .
The Ukrainian authorities nevertheless want to see the Russian political leaders prosecuted for the invasion of the territory and therefore call for the establishment of a special court for the crime of aggression.
” It would be a strong signal sent to the Russian elites, to show them that they will be punished, considers Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor General of Ukraine. Not only the military who could be prosecuted by the ICC, but also the political elite who committed the aggression. »
But setting up such a mechanism raises complex legal issues. The European Union therefore favors a step-by-step approach, initially supporting the establishment of a kind of dedicated prosecutor’s office, which will be based in The Hague and operational from July 2023, according to Didier Reynders, European Commissioner to Justice.
We start the process. A court might be a second step. The first is to be able to collect evidence of the crime of aggression, and to organize discussions between the prosecutors. And that is why we proposed the idea of an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression against Ukraine. And then, afterwards, we will be able to see what are the best means of organizing the second stage, that is to say the mechanism which will have the capacity to organize a trial.
It remains to be seen if, and when, such a tribunal could see the light of day, and under what conditions. In the meantime, Ukrainian investigators are working. According to the Attorney General, they have already identified 67,000 Russian war crimes, while justice has already handed down 25 convictions.
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