“I am absolutely convinced that Mr. Putin will answer for his actions”affirmed Friday on franceinfo Me Emmanuel Daoud, lawyer at the Paris bar, specialist in international criminal law and registered on the list of lawyers with the International Criminal Court, while the accusations against Moscow of committing war crimes in Ukraine multiply , as civilian casualties rise in bloody attacks by the Russian military, and as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates alleged war crimes in Ukraine. “These lawsuits are very strong signals sent to all stakeholders, starting with Mr. Putin”assures Emmanuel Daoud. “At one point or another, they will have to answer for their actions”asserts the lawyer.
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franceinfo: What can the law do in a war where the rules are clearly flouted?
Me Emmanuel Daoud : What the law can do is to announce a very clear message to war criminals, and in particular to Mr Putin, whom I consider to have been a war criminal for a long time, since the bombardment of Aleppo, since the bombing of Grozny, where civilian populations were deliberately attacked. It is a signal against impunity. It must be understood that the law and the implementation of the law before international courts, and in particular the International Criminal Court, takes time. The crimes that are prosecuted are crimes that are imprescriptible. Those who are war criminals and who are identified as such know that at one time or another they will have to answer for their actions. And I think it’s a means of pressure which obviously may not be very effective today to immediately stop hostilities, to put an end to these bombardments against civilian populations, but has the merit of existing. Slobodan Milosevic was brought before the International Criminal Court, Ratko Mladic too. So don’t despair.
Should we imagine a reversal of power in Russia to see one day Vladimir Putin having to explain himself?
Yes it is a hypothesis. But I would really like to insist on one point. I may be too optimistic or gullible. But the existence of this international criminal law, the existence of these prosecutions, the very existence of the opening of this investigation are very strong signals that are sent to all the parties involved in this conflict, starting with Mr Putin.
Are we playing by the same rules?
No, of course we don’t play by the same rules since, when you are a dictator and a despot like Mr Putin and you are a war criminal, you have to look smiling at the International Criminal Court and the jurists shake. But that is the time of the short term. In the medium and long term, it may be a different story.
You mentioned Grozny, Aleppo, facts that go back five or twenty years. Yet Vladimir Putin and the Russian authorities have never been worried about these facts…
The difference today, and unfortunately the cynical difference, especially when we place ourselves on the side of Western nations, is that this time we are in Europe. This time, it concerns Ukrainian men and women. And I think we have reached a point of no return on Mr. Poutine’s side. I’ll put it like I mean it trivially. Presumably, Europeans didn’t care about Chechens and didn’t care about Syrians. Today it is the Ukrainians. This is a President of Ukraine who challenges Western nations every day. And I think that’s going to be a game changer.
Are we now reaching the limits of the organization of international law, the very powerful power of the members of the Security Council with one of its members finding himself an aggressor?
The Security Council, in this case, is totally bound hand and foot and cannot in any way be active in respecting the application of international criminal law. I remind you that the United States, China, Russia, Israel and India are not signatories to the Rome Statute. So, we can clearly see the limits of the exercise. However, we have a Ukrainian situation, which is before the International Criminal Court with an investigation that has been launched.
How many hospitals will be destroyed, maternity hospitals targeted, theaters sheltering civilians for the attitude of Westerners, for the law to take over the immediacy of Vladimir Putin’s decisions?
I cannot answer this question. The only thing I can tell you is as a lawyer and as a citizen, when I see the ruins of the theater in Mariupol, tears come to my eyes. But there is also the will of each and every one of us, and with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, to fight because international criminal justice is not an empty word. And I am absolutely convinced that Mr. Putin will answer for his actions.