Following the issuance of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday criticized Moscow for placing another of its judges on a wanted list in Russia.
In March, ICC Judge Tomoko Akane issued an arrest warrant for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly committing the war crime of wrongful deportation of Ukrainian children.
Akane was the most recent individual in Russia to be the subject of an arrest warrant, according to TASS, following ICC prosecutor Karim Khan and Judge Rosario Salvatore Aitala, who have been under investigation since May for their role in the decision to call for Putin’s arrest in connection with the conflict in Ukraine.
The judge is identified as a woman and was born in Japan on June 28, 1956, according to the Russian notice that AFP has seen. It claims that the judge is wanted for violating the Russian Criminal Code but does not specify what exactly that violation is.
The move has been criticized as a “new attempt to undermine the international mandate” of the court by the Assembly of States Parties presidency, which speaks for the ICC member nations.
In addition, it reaffirmed that “it stands firmly by the Court, its elected officials, and its personnel” and that it has “full confidence” in the court’s objectivity and independence.
The Russian Investigative Committee began a criminal case against ICC Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan and ICC judges Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez.
They claim that the prosecution of an innocent person on false charges of committing a serious crime led to the opening of the case against the prosecutor.
The committee emphasized that “there are no grounds to bring them to criminal responsibility,” making the criminal case “knowingly unlawful.”