Before Putin, Get To Know the Leaders Against Whom International Arrest Warrants Have Been Issued

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine entering its second year and the Kremlin's non-compliance with calls for a diplomatic solution, President Vladimir Putin has now received "personal embarrassment" by the issuance of an international arrest warrant against him.

 

Putin Wanted

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court announced the issuance of an arrest warrant against Putin for his responsibility for war crimes committed in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion on February 24, 2022.

Putin is wanted and the court has issued arrest warrants for two people in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia.

The court explained in a statement that Putin is alleged to be responsible for the war crime of the unlawful deportation of children and their unlawful transfer from occupied areas in Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

The court emphasized that there were reasonable reasons to believe that Putin is personally responsible for these crimes.

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, stated that it had become his duty to arrest Putin, born in 1952, if he entered any of the 123 member states of the court.

Khan confirmed that the arrest warrants were based on criminal evidence and investigations, adding that the evidence presented focused on crimes against children, as they are the most vulnerable group in society.

The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, was established in 2002 to consider the worst international crimes committed in the world.

The court has been investigating possible war crimes or crimes against humanity committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine for over a year.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the International Criminal Court, but Kyiv has accepted the court's work on its territory and is cooperating with the prosecutor.

The court is the last resort for considering the worst crimes in the world when countries are unable to try suspects themselves.

After only a few days since the start of the Russian invasion, Khan began an investigation into the possibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

 

Historical Decision

Putin's arrest warrant is an unprecedented step by the International Criminal Court against a president of a state member of the United Nations Security Council alongside four other states: France, the United States, China, and Britain.

The court's decision received praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said it was “a historic decision from which historical responsibility begins." Western allies of Ukraine also praised the decision, with the European Union stating that it was just the beginning, while U.S. President Joe Biden called the arrest warrant against his Russian counterpart "justified."

Human Rights Watch also expressed its support for the move, saying it's a great day for many victims.

However, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova rejected the arrest warrants issued by the court. She said on Telegram that the decisions of the International Criminal Court are of no importance to Russia, adding that the country is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and has no obligations under it.

At the executive level, many human rights activists see little possibility of Putin being seen as a prisoner, as the warrant cannot be executed due to Russia being a member state of the Security Council and having the right to use the veto power.

Some have cited, for example, the exclusion of the former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from being handed over to the court, despite the existence of an authority in his country that came as a result of a popular revolution that toppled, arrested, and imprisoned him.

During his rule, al-Bashir was able to visit a number of member states of the International Criminal Court, including South Africa and Jordan, despite the fact that the Hague Court issued an arrest warrant against him in 2009 for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This was due to the outbreak of an armed conflict between government forces and rebel movements in 2003, which resulted in the deaths of around 300,000 and the displacement of around 2.5 million others, according to the United Nations.

However, there have been fair trials in the past. The same International Criminal Court has previously succeeded in prosecuting some of the world's worst criminals.

 

Slobodan Milosevic

On January 12, 2002, the world witnessed the first trial session of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, born in 1941, who held power for years during which he led widespread ethnic cleansing campaigns in the Balkan countries, ultimately leading to his downfall.

The Serbian authorities arrested Milosevic in early April 2001 and handed him over to the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia, The Hague, in June of the same year.

The Serbian leader was convicted of committing the crime of genocide in the Srebrenica massacre that took place in July 1995, taking off the lives of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the hands of Serbian forces.

He was also convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia (1991–1995) and Kosovo (1998–1999).

This was because he was the political mastermind behind the ethnic cleansing campaign, which saw the expulsion of Croats and Muslims from Serbian areas in Bosnia.

Milosevic faced 60 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but he refused to appoint a defense lawyer and defended himself in his 5-year trial.

He spent his time moving between prison and the hospital due to his deteriorating health, which led to the postponement of his verdict several times; on March 11, 2006, he was found dead in his cell.

 

Radovan Karadzic

On March 20, 2019, the International Criminal Court sentenced the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, to life imprisonment for his involvement in the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, as well as for his role in other war crimes.

Karadzic, born in 1945, was charged with 10 counts, including the Srebrenica massacre, and was found guilty of persecution, extermination, murder, rape, inhumane acts, and forcible transfer, particularly during the four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Karadzic, a poet and psychiatrist who became a merciless political leader, became the highest-ranking official to be tried for the Bosnian War after the death of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic during his trial in 2006.

 

Ratko Mladic

The third individual that the victims' families saw in the courtroom is the former military leader of the Bosnian Serbs, General Ratko Mladic, who began his trial in The Hague on May 16, 2012, for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.

Born in 1942, Mladic evaded international justice for 16 years but was arrested in Serbia on May 26, 2011, and charged with crimes committed by his forces during the Bosnian War, which resulted in the deaths of 100,000 people and the displacement of 2.2 million between 1992 and 1995.

Mladic, who was Karadzic's military assistant, was specifically accused of the Srebrenica massacre, considered the worst massacre in Europe since World War II by the International Court of Justice.

Old photos showed Mladic distributing candy to children in Srebrenica and riding a bus with women while men and teenagers were being led to a forest in the city and executed.

Mladic was also convicted of orchestrating a broader "ethnic cleansing" campaign to drive Muslims and Bosniaks out of key areas for the establishment of Greater Serbia in Yugoslavia, before its breakup after the fall of communism.

Mladic's initial 40-year sentence for genocide and war crimes was upgraded to life imprisonment in 2019, and he was transferred from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom that same year to continue his life sentence there.

 

Charles Taylor

In the face of many leaders and rulers escaping prosecution for crimes they have committed against their people, former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who compared himself to Jesus, stood trial for the killings of his country's citizens in the 1990s.

Taylor was arrested in 2006 and transferred to the United Nations-backed Special Court in 2007.

On May 30, 2012, the Special Court for Sierra Leone sentenced Taylor to 50 years in prison for aiding and abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone during the 10-year civil war.

The judges of the Special Court for Sierra Leone stated that former Liberian President Charles Taylor may have profited from Sierra Leone by receiving diamonds from rebels in exchange for supplying them with weapons and ammunition.

The judges said that Taylor abused his position to aid and abet war crimes instead of promoting peace and reconciliation and that he showed no remorse for the crimes he was convicted of and did not accept responsibility, according to the United Nations.

 

Dominic Ongwen

Examples of people who thought they were beyond the law and that justice would not reach them include those who committed war crimes against their own people, such as the former leader of the so-called Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, Dominic Ongwen, born in 1975.

On May 6th, 2021, the International Criminal Court sentenced Ongwen to 25 years in prison. He was recruited as a child and later became one of the leaders of this brutal rebel movement known for its atrocities, on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ongwen was convicted in February 2021 on 61 charges, including forced pregnancy, which had not been previously addressed by the International Criminal Court. He was convicted, in particular, of committing murder, rape, sexual enslavement, and the recruitment of children.

The United Nations says that the Lord's Resistance Army, founded by Joseph Kony, who is still subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, has killed over 100,000 people and abducted 60,000 children in acts of violence that have spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic.

 

Dozens of Arrest Warrants

It should be noted that since its establishment in 2002 until 2018, the International Criminal Court had convicted only three individuals, all of them from Africa and south of the Sahara, including two Congolese militia leaders and one from Mali.

However, the court has been able to issue dozens of arrest warrants against heads of state, intelligence agencies, and military officers.

On June 27, 2011, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against the late Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi for crimes against humanity committed against civilians.

In summary, despite the International Criminal Court's issuance of a second arrest warrant against a sitting head of state, Putin, and prior to that, former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the court does not have a police force and relies on the will of states to implement arrest warrants.