The Attorney General of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda said Friday that a
"wide range of behavior constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity"
had been committed in Ukraine since 2014, calling for a full investigation.
Prosecutors at the ICC, created in 2002 to try the most atrocious crimes, opened a preliminary investigation into the situation in Ukraine in 2015.
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Presenting the conclusion of this examination by her services, the prosecutor said in a press release that
"
there
was reasonable reason to believe at this stage that a wide range of behaviors constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity falling within the jurisdiction of the Court had been committed in connection with the situation in Ukraine ”
.
She stressed that these crimes,
"committed by the various parties to the conflict, were serious enough to warrant the opening of a
full
investigation"
by her office.
Kiev immediately welcomed this announcement, described as a
"historic decision".
"International justice may not be served quickly, but it is inevitable",
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba reacted on Twitter.
Ukraine cooperation
Ukraine has not signed the Rome Statute, the international treaty founding the ICC, but has formally recognized the jurisdiction of the Court for crimes committed on its territory.
Fatou Bensouda also praised
"the cooperation of the Ukrainian authorities, which in particular provided her with detailed information on the investigations and judicial proceedings initiated at the national level with regard to crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the Court".
But she nevertheless underlined that her services concluded "that the competent Ukrainian and / or Russian authorities have not taken measures with regard to the persons and behaviors identified by the Office, or that the national judiciary is + unavailable + in the territory under the control of the opposing party ”.
The next step in the procedure is to ask the judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber for formal authorization to open an investigation.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 45 million people, has experienced two popular uprisings in the span of two decades.
More than a hundred people perished in the 2014 uprising, accompanied by street battles, which led to the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Soon after, Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula from Crimea.
A few weeks later, eastern Ukraine found itself in the throes of war with pro-Russian separatists of whom Moscow, despite its denials, is widely regarded as the political and military godfather.
This conflict has left more than 13,000 dead and nearly 1.5 million displaced.
The intensity of the fighting declined significantly after peace accords reached in 2015, but the political process has not progressed much since.
Whether the investigation into the plane crash of flight MH17 would be part of the ICC's investigation was not clear on Friday evening.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which left Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, was hit in mid-flight by a Soviet-designed BUK missile, according to investigators, over the area of armed conflict with the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
All 298 people on board, including 196 Dutch, were killed.
A trial is underway in the Netherlands, where three Russians and a Ukrainian, four senior pro-Russian separatists from eastern Ukraine, are being prosecuted for murder and for being deliberately involved in the crash of the aircraft by conveying the BUK anti-aircraft missile system, before it is activated by other unidentified people.
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