“My brother was killed here on these steps,” said the 46-year-old. “He was going to the basement at night and stopped lighting a cigarette when a soldier shot him for his sake.” He believes that the body of Dima’s brother prevented Russian soldiers from entering the basement and prevented the killing of three people who were underground without heating and electricity for a month. Konovalov, who saw his brother shot from the ground floor of the house, shows graves around his neighborhood, marked with improvised wooden crosses. “No one will forgive these Russians,” he said. “Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will also pay for these heinous crimes.” As photos of decomposing corpses, many with their hands tied behind their backs, spread around the world from Kiev’s satellite cities this week, demands have been raised to prosecute Russian officials responsible for wartime atrocities. US President Joe Biden has called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and said he should be tried. Emanuel Macron, the French leader, said there were “very clear indications of war crimes” in Boucha and that those responsible should be held accountable. German Chancellor Olaf Soltz lamented the “horrific and horrific” images, saying: “We must investigate these crimes of the Russian army without hesitation.” Moscow has accused the Ukrainians of directing “fake” killings and hiring actors to play victims, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including satellite images showing corpses strewn on the streets of Bucha when more than 40,000 Russians . Human rights groups have urged investigators to come forward and take action to ensure what they described as crime scenes. The Bucha, a short drive from Kiev, is said to be just a small window into what is believed to be a motive for illegal killings, rapes and other crimes against civilians in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine since its inception. Russian invasion in February. 24, in what Putin called a “special military operation.” Serhiy Konovalov, whose brother was shot by Russian troops in Bucha, crouches over his makeshift grave © Andres Schipani / FT In other suburbs of Kiev from which Russian troops have withdrawn in recent days, photographers at the scene have taken shocking photos: corpses stuffed into wells with bags over their heads. a dead woman with a swastika engraved on her flesh, a brutal reflection of Putin’s casus belli defeating the “Nazis” in Ukraine. Even before the massacres, work had begun in international justice circles to identify abuses linked to the Russian attack. Legal experts say that this project is remarkable for its speed, but that it will test the limits of a long-underfunded system that has long been criticized for being dangerous in its procedures and inconsistent in its ability to prosecute those who are ultimately responsible for some of the most serious crimes in the world. “These are some of the worst atrocities Europe has ever seen [1990s] “Balkan wars,” said Kingsley Abbott, head of the Global Accountability and International Justice Division at the International Law Commission. “What was remarkable is the way in which the whole international framework of justice exists – and is being tested as well.” The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which has the power to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, launched an investigation four days after the invasion began. Its attorney general, Karim Khan, took the unusual step and briefly visited western Ukraine in March, where he held a teleconference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council instructed a commission of inquiry to begin collecting information on human rights abuses, including possible war crimes comparable to those in Syria and Myanmar, which have become digital repositories of digital and other information. which could one day be accepted as evidence in court. However, a leader like Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has not yet faced any legal action, although the United Nations has set up an evidence-gathering mechanism to support future trials for crimes committed during the civil war. Germany convicted a Syrian colonel in January of acting as one of the torturers of his regime for crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison. Zelensky this week accused Russia of war crimes and “genocide” – the most serious crimes against humanity – and said he approved the creation of a “special justice mechanism” under which Ukrainian and international investigators, prosecutors and judges would work together to lay the foundations for a future war crimes tribunal. Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited Bucha on April 4, accused Russia of war crimes and “genocide” © Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty Images “It’s time to do our best,” Zelensky said, “to make the Russian army’s war crimes the latest manifestation of such evil on earth.” However, international justice experts say any legal account of Russian leaders suspected of crimes – including Putin – will be fraught with danger. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is a member of the ICC, and the court lacks jurisdiction to prosecute the crime of the attack, which experts say is a manifestly illegal war – a charge that has convicted senior Nazi leaders in the Nuremberg Trials. defining milestone in the history of international justice. As Ukraine’s institutional capacity continues to expand as a result of the war, lawyers and diplomats are working out how to gather evidence and where any future court could conduct its work. Once that is decided, international justice experts say the post-war consensus will be tested as well. “It’s a matter of whether the 1945 settlement survives or dies,” said Philippe Sands, a lawyer and author representing the Gambia in a genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice for its anti-Muslim rhetoric. . “My concern is that we will go three years ahead and that there are about half a dozen trials of middle-level commanders in The Hague for people who did things in Bucha, but the rest of the people like Putin and his army and defense are the leaders. unharmed “. “That would be a sad result,” he added.
Case construction
After the horrors of World War II, the prosecutors who laid the foundations for the Nuremberg trials came up with the concept of crimes against humanity to protect people from systematic attacks. The crime against humanity now called aggression – then called crimes against peace – was used to persecute Nazi and Japanese leaders in time of war, but has not been enshrined in international criminal law since. The UN codified the crime against humanity of the genocide in 1948. International criminal justice flourished in the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, when tribunals for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda were established. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002. In 2012, at a point now considered high on international justice, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed by insurgents in the neighborhood. Sierra Leone. Residents pass in front of the wreckage of Russian military equipment after the capture of Bucha by the Ukrainian army © Roman Pilipey / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock However, international tribunals are expensive and, like most multilateral efforts, are politically charged. The United States, perhaps reluctant to pursue its own military campaigns for the past 20 years, has refused to join the ICC, although it has supported its work – which is funded by the Member States – at times. In Ukraine, justice officials and civil society groups began documenting suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2014-15, when Russia annexed Crimea following the pro-Western Maidan uprising and then instigated a separatist uprising in the United States. in a war in which about 14,000 people have died. Ukraine did not accede to the ICC, but its parliament accepted the court’s jurisdiction and launched an investigation into the war.
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Are you from Ukraine? Do you have friends and family in or from Ukraine whose lives have been disrupted? Or maybe you’re doing something to help these people, such as raising funds or housing people in your homes. We want to hear from you. Tell us through a short survey. This was completed in 2020 when the court concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed, but refused to prosecute, citing lack of resources and the “operational challenges” of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the beginning of the invasion, more than 40 countries have referred Russia to the ICC for investigation. The outcry has been fueled by multiple attacks on civilian targets, including the Russian bombing of a maternity hospital and theater in Mariupol, and Friday’s rocket attack on a train station in Kramatorsk. Judicial authorities and civil society watchdogs in Ukraine have begun gathering evidence that could be used in future trials. “Ukraine is already documenting and collecting all the facts of serious international crimes taking place in our territory,” said Gyunduz Mamedov, a former deputy attorney general of Ukraine. It is part of a coalition of non-governmental groups investigating everything from Russian attacks on apartment buildings to the use of prohibited weapons such as cluster bombs and the killing of civilians in …
