The International Criminal Court on Friday rejected Mongolia’s request to appeal its referral to the Assembly of States Parties over its failure to execute an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit.
The Russian leader visited Mongolia in September despite an arrest warrant issued against him by the CPI for the alleged war crime of deportation of Ukrainian children after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2022.
Chamber rejects Mongolia’s request for leave to appeal
the pre-trial chamber judges said in their decision.
At the end of October, the CPI criticized Mongolia, a member state, for failing to arrest Mr. Putin and said the case would be referred to the Assembly of States Parties, the court’s supervisory body, for possible sanctions.
The Rome Statute, the Court’s founding treaty signed by all member states, obliges countries to arrest wanted suspects.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is accompanied by Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh upon his arrival in Mongolia.
Photo : Getty Images / Natalia Gubernatorova
A few days later, Mongolia requested permission to appeal the decision as well as the disqualification of two judges.
She also asked the court, which sits in The Hague, to suspend the appeal decision until a decision is made regarding the two judges.
On Friday, the Court rejected these requests. The judges declared that its decision and its referral to the Assembly of States Parties could not be appealed since this decision does not constitute a formal decision of the Court on the merits or procedural question of the case
.
Illegal deportation of children
The CPI issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin in March 2023.
She stated that there are reasonable grounds to believe
that the Russian president bears responsibility for the war crime of illegal deportation
of Ukrainian children to Russia.
kyiv says thousands of Ukrainian children have been forcibly removed from orphanages and other state institutions after Russian forces took control of large swaths of Ukrainian territory in the 2022 invasion.
Russia, for its part, says it has removed some children from areas near the fighting to ensure their protection.
Moscow dismissed the mandate as inconsequential. However, Vladimir Putin’s visit to Mongolia, a country of three million inhabitants landlocked between Russia and China, was the only trip by the Russian president to a member country of the CPI since the mandate was launched.
