ICC WAR CRIMES PROSECUTOR KHAN ‘WANTED’ IN RUSSIA OVER WAR CRIMES CHARGES AGAINST PUTIN

ICC Chief Karim Khan visited Bucha in Ukraine in April, 2022.

Sat 20 May 2023:

Russian media reported on Friday that Moscow had issued an arrest warrant for the ICC prosecutor who had filed a warrant in March for the detention of Russian President Vladimir Putin on accusations of war crimes.

Karim Khan, the war crimes court’s prosecutor, was added to the Interior Ministry’s wanted list, according to a database cited by Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency on Friday.

A picture of the ICC prosecutor, who is a citizen of the United Kingdom, could be seen in the Russian interior ministry’s database on Friday, according to news reports.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said in March that Khan was being probed for the “criminal prosecution of a person known to be innocent” – in reference to the war crime charges against Putin.

The ICC prosecutor was also being investigated for allegedly preparing “an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection”, Russian investigators said at the time.

Khan was listed as a guy born on March 30, 1970 in Edinburgh, Scotland, but the wanted poster did not state what offense he had committed.

Following the ICC’s announcement that an arrest warrant had been issued for Putin on charges that he had committed war crimes by forcibly deporting hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia, Russia started the criminal investigation into Khan.

The international court also issued an arrest warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights.

According to Kyiv, over 19,000 Ukrainian children have been transported to Russia since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with over 4,000 of them likely to be orphans. Many are said to be placed in institutions or foster homes.

Announcing the arrest warrants in March, the ICC said there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the abductions of Ukrainian children, and “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts”.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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