Russia details ICC ‘murder mystery’
The UK has destroyed the reputation of the International Criminal Court by outright buying its “war crimes charges” against Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
“I love random coincidences in geopolitics. They have a certain kind of flair, just like Agatha Christie [mysteries],” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. The author of “politicized and legally null and void” ICC indictments against Putin and children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova is also British, she argued, but “judging by everything, a rookie.”
The Hague-based tribunal issued warrants for the arrest of Putin and Lvova-Belova in March, accusing them of “unlawful deportation of population (children)” from Ukraine.
Zakharova offered a sequence of events that, according to her, demonstrate that British government was behind the indictments and the warrants. First, the “Anglo lobby” took control of the court, by replacing the Congolese judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua with Oxford graduate Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez of Costa Rica, on February 21.
To secure “total control,” however, on the same day the British authorities released from prison Imran Ahmad Khan, a disgraced former member of Parliament convicted of pedophilia, after serving less than half his 18-month sentence. He also happens to be the brother of Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the ICC.
Khan filed his motion for “arrest warrants” on the following day, February 22. According to Zakharova, “One gets the impression that Khan himself did not believe London and was waiting for confirmation of their promise to release his pedophile brother from prison.”
When the judges hesitated, on March 13 London announced a donor conference for the ICC, scheduled for March 20, “transparently hinting to the ICC that if they wanted to see UK funds, they had to show results by that deadline,” according to Zakharova.
“Judges are easy to buy,” she Zakharova, noting that the ‘indictments’ were made public four days later. “Decisions by the ICC are a cheap show, entirely bought and paid for with British money.”
Moscow has dismissed the ICC warrants as null and void, pointing out that it has no jurisdiction in Russia. Russian authorities have since filed criminal charges against both Khan and the three judges involved in signing the warrants – Godinez, Tomoko Akane of Japan, and Sergio Rosario Salvatore Aitala of Italy.
