Putin’s arrest warrant

Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte has urged the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his activities in Ukraine as soon as possible.

“Putin is a war criminal,” Del Ponte, who rose to notoriety prosecuting war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said in an interview published Saturday by the newspaper Le Temps.

The 75-year-old Swiss native claimed that international arrest warrants for Putin and other high-ranking Russian officials were required to hold them accountable for the war crimes perpetrated since Moscow started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Thousands have been dead and millions have been displaced just over five weeks into the invasion, with regions of Ukraine reduced to ruins.

Del Ponte, who previously worked on the UN panel investigating rights violations in Syria’s war for years, emphasised that obtaining an arrest warrant was an essential indication that “investigative work had been done.”

“It is the only mechanism that exists that allows the perpetrator of a war crime to be arrested and brought before the ICC,” she told Le Temps.

Del Pont said that an arrest warrant did not guarantee that Putin would be apprehended.

“That would never happen if he stayed in Russia. However, he would be unable to leave his nation, and doing so would send a strong signal that he is opposed by a number of governments.”

On March 3, the Hague-based International Criminal Court’s head prosecutor launched an active investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine, with the support of more than 40 governments parties to the court.

Del Ponte stated that her experience as head prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia gave her optimism that Putin, like former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, would be captured and tried with war crimes one day.

She also stated that “incriminating evidence must be uncovered against high-level political and military officials.”

“The issue is accurately identifying who planned, ordered, and executed the war crimes at the top of the command chain.”

Although Ukraine is not a member to the Rome Statute treaty that formed the ICC, it did officially recognise the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory in 2014.

In 2016, Russia removed its signature from the Rome Statute.