Fadi al-Abdullah, spokesman for the International Criminal Court, said the decision to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin was not a condemnation, but an invitation to appear and investigate.
In a statement to Al-Arabiya/Al-Hadath from The Hague on Friday night, he said that Putin’s arrest depends on international cooperation, adding that the Russian president is suspected of war crimes.
Distribution of the memorandum among Member States
In doing so, he signaled that countries that are not members of the court are not bound by its decisions, indicating that a warrant for Putin’s arrest would be sent to member states.
And he added: “We have the right to ask any member state to arrest Putin on its territory.”
In addition, he confirmed that the court considers the cases of Ukraine impartially.
Putin and the presidential commissioner for children’s rights
Notably, the International Criminal Court earlier on Friday announced that it had issued an arrest warrant for Putin on charges of war crimes in Ukraine since the start of the Russian military operation in February 2022.
“Today, March 17, 2023, the II Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of two persons in connection with the situation in Ukraine: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova”, Commissioner of the President of the Russian Federation for Children’s Rights.
“illegal deportation”
They 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 adds that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears personal criminal responsibility for the above crimes because (firstly) he committed these acts directly, jointly with and/or through others… (and secondly, secondly, he does not properly control subordinate military personnel who have committed or allowed the commission of acts.
“null” and “minor”
Commenting on the situation, 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 press secretary of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, wrote on Telegram that “the decisions of the International Criminal Court do not matter for our country.”
And she added that “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. He also added that “arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court are not legally valid” for Russia.
Notably, the Rome Statute is the founding text of the International Criminal Court, which is based in The Hague, the Netherlands.
