ASSOCIATION OF LAWYERS FROM BLACK SEA – CASPIAN REGION
Baku international scientific-practical conference : 21 Dec 2024
Intervention of Yiannis Rachiotis , member of the Athens Bar, criminologist, president of the Hellenic Union of Progressive Lawyers [ HUPL] , member of the Hellenic Society of Criminologists, member of the bureau of the “International Association of Democratic Lawyers-IADL”.
“CRIMINAL LAW IN THE ERA OF WAR PREPARATION”
During the last 3 years the majority of the European Countries started to prepare their people for a possible war against Russia. Some governments, including that of my country openly say that they are already in war with Russia, although such a war was never declared, at least officially.In the same period, the same countries actively support Israel in the extermination of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Under these conditions, the mobilization of criminal law to support the war preparation is not surprising.
Several NATO member states have enacted new legislation, or utilized existing laws, or implemented punitive measures to support their war policies across various areas of public interest. Additionally, given the inherently theatrical nature of criminal proceedings and the extensive experience of the West in utilizing the media within the realm of criminal law, criminal procedures were employed not only to prosecute the individuals involved, but also to convey appropriate messages to the majority of public opinion.
In this context criminal and legal proceedings have opened in the West against Russians, Palestinians, or Arabs , and also against locals who were suspected of solidarity with the declared as enemies.Some examples:
High profiled Russian businessmen were arrested and accused of conspiracy, support of terrorism, money laundering or whatever. Other Russians in UK, Germany, Netherlands etc had their property confiscated . The Courts where the victims appealed usually ruled against them. E.g. the Courts in the Netherlands ruled that the occupation of a Russian businessman’s house by anarchists was lawful, because in Amsterdam there is a housing crisis.
Even ordinary Russian immigrants had seen their bank accounts to be blocked simply because they were Russians, or had been subject into restrictions of their freedom of movement, or had their residence permissions cancelled.
Local professionals especially lawyers or accountants, were put under investigation, accused of various crimes and had their bank accounts blocked, simply because they had Russian clients.
On the opposite side, terrorist actions which claimed the lives of Russian citizens or damaged their property remained unpunished, even in cases where the perpetrators were identified.
The same instumentalization of the criminal law was observed against Palestinians or against pro-Palestine activists: In France pro-Palestine demonstrations were totally banned. ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/france-bans-pro-palestine-rallies-cracks-down-on-protesters-amid-gaza-war)
The UK, Greece etc instead of passing directly new legislation in order to ban acts of solidarity with Palestine they used new interpretations of the existing legislations . In UK, Home Secretary suggested that “ waving the Palestinian flag or chanting freedom slogans specific to Palestine may not be legal when done with the intention of “glorifying terrorist acts.” In Greece public demonstration of a Palestinian Flag once was prosecuted as a crime of disruption of Country’s international relations. In Austria and Germany the same Palestinian symbols, chants or logos were interpreted as anti-Semitism which was already criminalized.
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On the international level, we should highlight the differing attitude of the International Criminal Court -ICC between the war in Ukraine and the genocidal war against Palestine and Lebanon.
At the moment , ICC is the only permanent international criminal Court. Although USA is not part of ICC, the West has strong influence on it: Its prosecutor, Mr. Karim Khan, a British lawyer, is very active for the western interests. A large number of its judges had previously served in various institutions or political bodies controlled by the West.
In the case of the war in Ukraine, the prosecutor of ICC , since the very first weeks visited many times government officials in Ukraine, including the President and extensively publicized his visits . He never visited Russia, or even discussed with her representatives , breaching the principle of impartiality, and the obligation of any Court to have equal distance between the parties .
Following his petition to the pre-trial chamber, the Court almost immediately issued arrest warrants against the Russian president and the commissioner for children’s rights, on the grounds of alleged offends against children rights. The facts of the alleged crime was the relocation of the orphans from the war -zone for adoption by Russian families. Right after the issuance of the warrants the Western disinformation centers started their intense media exploitation.
Later, on June 2024 in order to keep anti-Russian sentiments mobilized the ICC issued four more arrest warrants against Russian top military officials.
We should note that neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of ICC , so in principle the Court had no authority on citizens of these two countries for alleged crimes committed on their soil . The Court based its jurisdiction on a letter from the Ukrainian Government that stated a limited acceptance of its jurisdiction only for crimes committed on Ukrainian soil after Feb of 2014.
In the case of Israel, things were different. Over the past decade various legal organizations have repeatedly petitioned the prosecutor’s office calling for the initiation of a formal investigation against Israel for crimes against Humanity, war crimes and genocide, submitting compelling evidence about that . All were rejected.
After October 2023 when Israel started systematically massacring Palestinians , provoking famine and demolishing the vital for human life infrastructure in Gaza strip, it became inevitable for ICC to take some kind of action in order to maintain its credibility: On May 2024 the prosecutor filed a petition to the pre-trial Chamber to issue arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and the then minister of defense. In an effort to mitigate the impact of his petition, the first against Western leaders, he accompanied his petition with a petition for arrest warrants against one political and one military leader of Palestine. Finally, the pre-trial Chamber issued arrest warrants six months later, but exclusively against the Israeli officials, as, in the interim, the two accused Palestinian leaders had been both extrajudicially killed by the Israeli state. On more unpunished war crime.
Just after the issuance of the above warrants, various Western leaders publicly denounced the decision and declared that they would not comply with the warrants, citing various justifications. One of the primary arguments was that Israel is not a State Party to the ICC. Notably, the same objection was not raised with respect to the arrest warrants issued against Russian officials, despite the fact that Russia, too, is not a member of the ICC.
It is obvious that we west uses Double Standards . Additionally the instrumentalization of ICC is evident. This behavior of the world’s strongest block of states raises some serious questions:
- Is a fair international criminal justice something achievable in our era or is it a, by definition, unrealistic goal? On our era ,the second looks as the correct answer.
- If the most important collective right of every nation is its sovereignty, do states or international organizations have the right to arrest and try sitting or former foreign leaders or does this constitute a grave violation of the sovereignty? On my point of view Sovereignty of states lies higher and beyond the field of criminal law.
- Do states have the right to accept, examine and execute legal actions of their citizens for compensation against foreign states for crimes or breaches of their civil rights? I believe that the answer should be positive, although some reservations are necessary.
In any case, of course, we must acknowledge that the answers to these questions are not easy . It is likely that things are not yet ripe for definitive answers.
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