The Interior Ministry placed the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on the wanted list in connection with the arrest warrant for Putin

The Russian Interior Ministry has placed the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) Karim Ahmad Khan, who issued the arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin, and the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, on the wanted list.

The card was found in the database by Mediazona. Khan is wanted under an unnamed article of the criminal code.

Two months ago, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Lviv-Belova on suspicion of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories to Russia. The prosecutor noted that during the investigation, his prosecutor’s office confirmed the cases of the deportation of at least several hundred children: many of them were given up for adoption in Russia, and Putin facilitated this procedure by accelerating the acquisition of Russian citizenship.

“We cannot allow children to be treated as spoils of war,” Khan said. He added that the warrant for Putin’s arrest was issued for life and can only be lifted if the Russian president is brought to trial and the judges dismiss the case.

Subsequently, the Investigative Committee launched criminal proceedings against Khan, as well as judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aytali and Sergio Gerardo Ugolde Godinez. The judges are accused of intentionally unlawfully detaining and preparing an attack on a representative of a foreign state, and the prosecutor is accused of bringing a knowingly innocent person to criminal liability, combined with unlawful accusation of a person of committing a serious or particularly serious crime.

On May 11, the head of the ICR, Alexander Bastrykin, announced his intention to place the prosecutor and ICC judges on the wanted lists. The latter are not yet in the database of the Ministry of the Interior.

The Kremlin called the ICC’s decision “irrelevant” and “Just asking the question” about Putin’s arrest is “outrageous and unacceptable.” The press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov noted that Moscow does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

Nevertheless, the State Duma voluntarily stood up for the president and introduced amendments giving him additional powers in this regard. On April 28, Putin signed a law criminalizing “facilitating the implementation of decisions” by international bodies that Russia considers illegal.