The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin will be the litmus test on ICC’s will upon member-states, while the Philippines—which abandoned in 2018 its inclusion in the Rome Statute-- watches closely if Putin’s arrest could lead to former President Duterte’s as well.
Despite protestations by the Philippine government, citing it had exited from ICC on March 17, 2018, the ICC is pursuing its probe into the killings by the Davao death squad when Duterte was then mayor and his drugs killings during his presidency.
Philippine legislators filed several resolutions to prevent the ICC from continuing its probe calling it an intrusion to Philippine sovereignty but human rights groups and lawyers are asking the continuance of such probes.
The Kremlin on March 19 said the arrest warrant of ICC on Putin is “legally void” since Moscow does not recognize ICC’s jurisdiction.
Putin is accused before the court of “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began February 2022.
US President Joe Biden said the arrest warrant was “justified,” since Putin had “clearly committed war crimes.”
Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the ICC’s decisions “have no meaning,” since “Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC and bears no obligations under it.”
The ICC had also issued a warrant against Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, on similar charges.
“There have been sanctions against me from all countries, even Japan, and now an arrest warrant but we will continue our work,” Lvova-Belova told state news agency RIA Novosti.
Margarita Simonyan, head of state broadcaster RT, hinted that Moscow could respond militarily to any attempts to arrest the Russian president.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan opened the investigation into possible war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Ukraine a year ago. Khan told AFP that there were “so many examples of people that thought they were beyond the reach of the law.”
The ICC move obligates the court’s 123 member states to arrest Putin and transfer him to The Hague for trial if he sets foot on their territory.
In Washington, Biden told reporters that the arrest warrant “makes a very strong point.” But the US is not a member of ICC.
A report last month by Yale University researchers said Russia has held some 6,000 Ukrainian children in at least 43 camps and other facilities as part of a “large-scale systematic network.” But Russia has denied committing atrocities.
But while that could make travel difficult for the Russian leader, the court has no police force of its own to enforce its warrants, and relies entirely on ICC states playing ball.
Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the arrest order against Putin is a “very significant step by the ICC. But “the chances are slim that we will ever see Putin arrested,” he said.
Russia — like the United States and China — is not a member of the ICC although it signed the court’s founding Rome Statute but did not ratify its membership. In 2016, Putin ordered the withdrawal of Russia’s signature, after the ICC launched a probe into the 2008 war in Georgia.
The ICC cannot try suspects in absentia, but Khan said the court had “other pieces of architecture” to push cases forward. The ICC is conducting 17 other investigations, including cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Venezuela, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
Detained former Senator Leila de Lima said the ICC arrest order against Putin should prompt the Philippines to rejoin ICC
“This development ought to press (the) Philippine government to consider resumption of ICC membership. That will be a most profound step in joining once again the overall struggle for international criminal justice,” she said while warning that protecting “our own tyrant from accountability” would only take the Philippines “nowhere but the widening path to impunity. This
De Lima was jailed by Duterte in 2017 on charges that she allegedly protected the illegal drug trade inside the state penitentiary when she was still justice secretary. She blames Duterte for the “trumped-up” charges against her.
President Marcos has echoed Duterte’s argument that the ICC has no right to investigate the drug war killings after Duterte ordered the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute in March 2018.
But his stand — the same held by other government officials — goes against a Supreme Court decision in March 2021, which states that
“withdrawing from the Rome Statute does not discharge a state party from the obligations it has incurred as a member.”