Moscow, Mar 20 (EFE).- The Investigation Committee of Russia (CIR) today opened a criminal case against the prosecutor and the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the arrest warrant issued last Friday against the Russian president , Vladimir Putin.
“The criminal prosecution is deliberately illegal, since there are no grounds to impute criminal responsibility,” the CIR, an extrajudicial body that reports directly to the Kremlin, reported in its statement.
The official note mentions the names of the prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, and the three CPI judges: Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and the Costa Rican Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godínez.
The CIR accuses Khan of taking an “illegal decision on the arrest of the President of the Russian Federation” and the Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.
According to said body, the prosecutor’s actions contain indications of crimes contemplated by the Russian penal code, among other things, for taking measures against the representative of a State protected by international norms “in order to hinder international relations.”
It stresses that, according to international conventions, heads of state have “absolute immunity” from the jurisdiction of other countries.
As soon as the arrest warrant was issued on Friday, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexandr Bastrikin, a personal friend of Putin, ordered an investigation into what he called “the illegal issuance by the ICC of an arrest warrant against a Russian citizen.” .
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov called the order “outrageous” and “inadmissible.”
“Russia, like other countries, does not recognize the jurisdiction of that court, so any such decision is insignificant for Russia from the point of view of law,” he said.
Meanwhile, the head of the Russian Duma or Lower House, Viacheslav Volodin, assured that “any attack” against President Vladimir Putin is considered an “aggression” against the country. The United States, Ukraine, the European Union (EU) and organizations such as Amnesty International supported the arrest warrant.
The high representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, stressed today that Putin can be arrested “immediately” in “more than 130 countries”.
China, whose leader, Xi Jinping, began a state visit to Russia today, criticized the arrest warrant for the Kremlin chief, with whom he will meet on Monday.
The ICC considers Putin “allegedly responsible” for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children, which has been denounced on numerous occasions by the Kiev authorities.
Both arrest warrants are the first of their kind issued by the ICC in the context of its investigation of war crimes in Ukraine.
The crimes of which he is accused occurred since at least February 24, 2022 in the “occupied territory of Ukraine”, said the ICC, which considers that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Putin has “individual criminal responsibility” for the war crime that involves the deportation of minors.