Will Vladimir Putin be arrested? What the ICC warrant means for Russian leader

The International Criminal Court has taken the major step of issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday hailed the “historic” decision by saying, “A historic decision from which historic responsibility will begin.” US president Joe Biden said Friday the International Criminal Court’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on accusations of a war crime for deporting Ukrainian children was “justified.” The move “makes a very strong point,” the US president told reporters at the White House, while noting that the United States is not a member of the ICC. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday hailed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin as an “important decision” for international justice and Ukraine’s people. But does this mean the Russian president, accused of the war crime of deporting children, is really ever likely to stand trial in The Hague? How could it happen? ICC member states are obliged to carry out the arrest warrants on Putin and Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, if they travel to their countries. “That’s right,” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan told AFP when asked if Putin would be liable for arrest if he set foot in any of those 123 nations. But while that could make travel difficult for Putin, the court has no police force of its own to enforce its warrants and relies entirely on ICC states playing ball. Countries haven’t always done so – particularly when it involves a sitting head of state like Putin. [caption id=“attachment_12312392” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A multi-store building burns after being attacked by Russian airstrike in Avdiivka, Ukraine. AP[/caption] Former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir managed to visit a number of ICC member states including South Africa and Jordan despite being subject to an ICC warrant. Despite being ousted in 2019, Sudan has yet to hand him over. Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, said it was a “very significant step by the ICC but that the chances are slim that we will ever see Putin arrested”. What are the main hurdles? First and foremost: Russia, like the United States and China, is not a member of the ICC. The ICC was able to file charges against Putin because Ukraine has accepted its jurisdiction over the current situation, although Kyiv too is not a member. But Moscow has dismissed the warrants against Putin out of hand. Russia does not extradite its citizens in any case. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia “does not recognise the jurisdiction of this court and so from a legal point of view, the decisions of this court are void”. Russia in fact signed the court’s founding Rome Statute but did not ratify it to become a member, and then withdrew its signature on Putin’s orders in 2016, after the ICC launched a probe into the 2008 war in Georgia. Putin was unlikely to end up in the dock for war crimes “unless there is a regime change in Russia”, said Cecily Rose, assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University. Have top-level suspects faced justice?  Yet history has seen several senior figures who have ended up in the dock on war crimes charges against all odds, said the ICC’s Khan. “There are so many examples of people that thought they were beyond the reach of the law… they found themselves in courts,” he said. “Look at Milosevic or Charles Taylor or Karadzic or Mladic.” The ICC convicted former Liberian warlord-turned-president Taylor in 2012 of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell in The Hague in 2006 while on trial for genocide at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was finally captured in 2008 and convicted of genocide by the tribunal, and his military leader Ratko Mladic was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment. There are several other biggest names targeted by the court of last resort for the world’s worst crimes, when countries cannot or will not prosecute suspects. However, not all of them have been detained. The ICC issued arrest warrants for Joseph Kony and other commanders of Ugandan rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 2005 for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the use of child soldiers and sex slaves. But Kony has never been arrested and remains on the run. In its first-ever verdict after taking up its role in 2003, the Hague-based court in 2012 sentenced Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga to 14 years in prison for conscripting children into his rebel army in 2002-2003. It upheld the decision on appeal in 2014. Lubanga was transferred in 2015 to Kinshasa to serve the rest of his sentence and was freed in 2020. In 2009, Sudan’s ex-president Omar al-Bashir became the first serving head of state to be targeted by an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the western Darfur region. Fighting erupted in Darfur in 2003 between ethnic minority rebels and Bashir’s Arab-dominated government. Two years after his fall from power, Sudan in 2021 announced it would hand over Bashir to the ICC, but the pledge has not been followed through. Bashir has been held in Khartoum’s Kober prison since his ouster. Any other options? The ICC cannot try suspects in absentia but Khan said the court had “other pieces of architecture” to push cases forward. He cited a recent case in which he asked judges to hold a hearing to confirm charges against Joseph Kony – the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, who launched a bloody rebellion in Uganda – even though Kony remains at large. “That process may be available for any other case – including the current one” involving Putin, added Khan. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.