Ukraine has taken a new step in its legal fight with the creation, on Sunday March 5, of the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (CIPA). The CIPA, an interim prosecutor’s office made up of magistrates, is a first step towards the creation of a special tribunal which could, in the future, try the perpetrators of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. At least that is Ukraine’s wish.
In Lviv, from March 3 to 5, European and American prosecutors and ministers met on the occasion of the United for Justice conference. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which opened an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Ukraine a year ago, does not have jurisdiction to deal with the crime of aggression, because neither Kyiv nor Moscow ratified its treaty. The idea of a special tribunal to judge Russian aggression was launched by Franco-British lawyer Philippe Sands on February 28, 2022 in the FinancialTimes, four days after the start of the Russian invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky endorsed the idea upon discovering the massacre committed by Russian troops in Boutcha in April 2022.
“Our union for justice must become a powerful impetus for the adoption of the draft resolution [de soutien à un tribunal spécial] by the United Nations General Assembly, Volodymyr Zelensky said at the Lviv conference. The draft resolution, intended to obtain the green light from as many UN members as possible, has been debated since mid-November 2022. A necessary step, believe many jurists, for this tribunal to be established on a basis of legitimacy. solid, knowing that he would not recognize the immunity attached to the leaders, enjoyed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu.
Joint Investigation Team
The Ukrainians are trying to convince their allies to support them in this perspective. But France, the United States and Great Britain are opposed to such a court, the creation of which could open the way to judicial processes of the same nature concerning other cases of aggression, such as the invasion of the Iraq in 2003. These countries also reject the idea of entrusting prosecutors with the task of defining the modalities of future wars. They are the ones who, with Russia and well before the conflict in Ukraine, applied themselves to limiting the prerogatives of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the crime of aggression.
Pending the possible creation of this court, the CIPA will operate under the supervision of Eurojust (the European Union Agency for judicial cooperation). At the end of March 2022, a joint investigation team was created within it to investigate crimes committed in Ukraine. Seven European countries are now part of it, including Ukraine, as a member attached to Eurojust, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia and Romania. The magistrates of these countries can pool their evidence and streamline their judicial cooperation. US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who came to Ukraine for the conference, signed a memorandum to allow US judicial cooperation with the joint team. CIPA’s work should start in The Hague during the summer.
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