Not in defense of the Russian Federation, but of international law and international justice

Last Friday, the Russian Ministry of the Interior issued an arrest warrant against the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, in response to the issuance, last March, of that court, whose jurisdiction Russia, as well as the United States of America and the Israeli occupation state, do not recognize. Putin and Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova Belova, accused of war crimes of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.

At the time, Moscow rejected that arrest warrant, saying that the court warrant is meaningless for the Russian Federation, from a legal point of view, Russia, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, is not a member of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and does not bear any obligations towards it and that it will not cooperate. With this international body, potential arrest warrants, if issued, will be legally invalid. The Russian authorities were not satisfied with that, but went further and decided a few days later to open a case against the judges of the International Criminal Court, which ended with an arrest warrant against the Court's Prosecutor, Mr. Karim Khan.

The United States of America welcomed without hesitation and quickly the decision of the International Criminal Court, as the war crime is clear and horrible, especially as it relates to the deportation of children from battle and danger areas in the Donbass to Russian territory, perhaps to protect them from the dangers of battles taking place between the Russian and Ukrainian armies in the region. And US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in response to a question at the time from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in a hearing in the US Senate, went too far when he called on every European country that is a member of the International Criminal Court to prepare for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has little movement and foreign visits, if He made a mistake in his assessment of the seriousness of the matter and ventured and decided to visit any of those European countries, as it is known that the man has rarely left Russia in recent years, and he has not traveled, for example, to the United States since 2015.

Going back a little to the position of the United States of America on the International Criminal Court, it is worth noting the measure announced by the Trump administration against the International Criminal Court to obstruct justice when it comes to victims of grave crimes committed by US forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, or Grave daily crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces in Palestine. Everyone remembers that executive order, issued by President Donald Trump on June 11, 2020, authorizing asset freezes and travel bans, even family ones, against ICC employees, as well as those assisting in its investigations. This executive order was, according to many international legal organizations, an assault on the rule of law and international justice at the same time.

The former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, went further than Anthony Blinken, the subsequent US Secretary of State, when he vowed dire consequences if the International Criminal Court continued on its current course, as he put it, and decided to investigate the war crimes that Israel committed in the occupied Palestinian territories with aggression 1967 in Palestine, what put the United States of America on the side of those who commit and cover up grave violations, and not on the side of those who prosecute them, according to the assessment of Human Rights Watch.

Also, returning to the decision of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Karim Khan, regarding Russia, and the shameful double standards involved in the decision, it should be noted that the State of Palestine had deposited, on January 2, 2015, a copy of Palestine’s accession document to the International Criminal Court With the United Nations Secretariat, this means giving the court jurisdiction over serious crimes that violate international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against children committed on the Palestinian territories.

Israel, of course, is not a member of the International Criminal Court, as is the case with the United States of America, the Russian Federation and other countries, but that is one thing and the pursuit of international justice for war crimes is another.

Palestine was not satisfied with submitting its document of accession to the International Criminal Court to the United Nations Secretariat, but rather continued its efforts until it borne fruit in February of the year 2021 with the confirmation of Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court that the court’s regional jurisdiction includes all the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. And the Gaza Strip in a clear reference to the territorial unity of these lands, which clearly means that the classifications of lands as contained in the agreements signed between the Palestinian and Israeli sides (A, B, and C) are of no importance from the point of view of international law.

The decision of the first Pre-Trial Chamber of the court represented a victory for truth, justice, international law and decisions of international legitimacy, restores matters to normal and gives the court its credibility after a series of threats, acts of bullying and penalties, to which it was subjected at the hands of the defunct administration of former US President Donald.

This opened a window of hope that the time has come to start arrangements that allow all natural persons in the occupying state (military or civilian) to be held accountable for all crimes stipulated in Article (5) of the Rome Statute, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and crimes of aggression. The demolition of Palestinian homes and facilities, crimes of racial discrimination, transfer, ethnic cleansing, and everything that would serve as a deterrent to the leaders of the occupation and prevent them from continuing their crimes against the Palestinian citizens under occupation.

However, this window of hope has been closed since Mr. Karim Khan assumed his duties as Prosecutor of the Court, succeeding Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, on the sixteenth of June 2021. This was not surprising, especially since Karim Khan landed on the court under an American-British umbrella with a political mission whose function is to politicize the work of the court. It is known that the court's new public prosecutor has an unclean record in this regard. Is it not he and no one else who took up the defense of a list of war criminals in Africa? As the former President of Liberia, the dictator Charles Taylor, who was convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone to 50 years in prison for war crimes and others against humanity, and defended a number of leaders in the Darfur rebel movements accused of war crimes in an armed attack on the base of the African Union peacekeeping mission in 2007 It claimed the lives of 12 members of the mission and about William Ruto, the former Vice President of Kenya, whom Khan succeeded in dropping the charges against him related to crimes against humanity, and about Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former Vice President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo accused of war crimes committed by his soldiers in Central Africa and others.

This Karim Khan, who issued an arrest warrant against the Russian President last March, continues to ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people and the decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court regarding the applicability of its legal jurisdiction to Palestine. Uganda and Tanzania, to send a message to the member states of the court calling on them not to be elected to this high position.

Finally, I am not here to defend anyone. The Russian Federation is a strong and great country, and it guarantees the defense of its citizens, including its President Vladimir Putin. However, this does not prevent me from praising the courage of the Russian Ministry of Interior and the arrest warrant against Karim Khan, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court. In that, there is a clear political message that Mr. Karim Khan should appreciate its consequences, after he persisted in politicizing the work of a court in which the Palestinian people were and still have hopes. on her .