Russian Children’s Commissioner Rejects ICC War Crime Allegations as False

Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
TT
20

Russian Children’s Commissioner Rejects ICC War Crime Allegations as False

Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)
Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova attends a news conference in Moscow, Russia, April 4, 2023. (Reuters)

Russia's commissioner for children's rights, who was accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) alongside President Vladimir Putin of war crimes in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that the ICC's allegations were false and unclear.

The Hague-based ICC on March 17 issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children's rights, for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.

The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and children's care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Some of those children, the ICC said, have been given up for adoption in Russia.

Lvova-Belova told a news conference in Moscow that the consent of children's parents was always sought and that the commission always acted in the best interests of the child.

If there were any specific problems with specific families, she said she was ready to help solve them.

"It is unclear to the presidential commissioner for children's rights what the International Criminal Court's allegations specifically consist of and what they are based on," her commission said in a separate statement about its work released before the news conference.

"The use of the formulation 'unlawful deportation of population (children)' in the ICC's official statement causes bewilderment," it said.

It said it had also not received any documents about the case from the ICC, whose jurisdiction Russia does not recognize.

The Commission said Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian regions claimed and partially controlled by Russia, had asked Russia to accept civilians, including orphans and children whose parents were missing.

The Kremlin has said the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.

Putin allies have cast the ICC, which countries including Russia, China and the United States do not recognize, as a "legal nonentity" that had never done anything significant.



ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
TT
20

ICC Opens Inquiry into Hungary for Failing to Arrest Netanyahu

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest earlier this month. (AFP)

Judges at the International Criminal Court want Hungary to explain why it failed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Budapest earlier this month.

In a filing released late Wednesday, The Hague-based court initiated non-compliance proceedings against Hungary after the country gave Netanyahu a red carpet welcome despite an ICC arrest warrant for crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.

During the visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced his country would quit the court, claiming on state radio that the ICC was “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”

The Hungarian leader, regarded by critics as an autocrat and the EU’s most intransigent spoiler in the bloc’s decision-making, defended his decision to not arrest Netanyahu.

“We signed an international treaty, but we never took all the steps that would otherwise have made it enforceable in Hungary,” Orbán said at the time, referring to the fact that Hungary’s parliament never promulgated the court’s statute into Hungarian law.

Judges at the ICC have previously dismissed similar arguments.

The ICC and other international organizations have criticized Hungary’s defiance of the warrant against Netanyahu. Days before his arrival, the president of the court’s oversight body wrote to the government in Hungary reminding it of its “specific obligation to comply with requests from the court for arrest and surrender.”

A spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on the non-compliance proceedings.

Hungary’s decision to leave the ICC, a process that will take at least a year to complete, will make it the sole non-signatory within the 27-member European Union. With 125 current signatory countries, only the Philippines and Burundi have ever withdrawn from the court as Hungary intends.

Hungary has until May 23 to submit evidence in its defense.