There must be no impunity for monsters who commit war crimes

  By Struan Stevenson

On April 1 2001, Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia and president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, surrendered to police special forces.

He was to answer charges of genocide and crimes against humanity arising from his leadership role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.

Milošević died in February 2002, before his trial by a UN tribunal in the Hague was concluded. His Bosnian Serb ally, Radovan Karadžić, and the Bosnian Serb military leader, General Ratko Mladić, were successfully prosecuted and are both serving life sentences.

Last Tuesday, the trial of Sudanese warlord Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman began. He is accused of crimes against humanity and was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague by the UN Security Council.

The arrest and prosecution of these murderers is something that Vladimir Putin should take note of. Presidents and their henchmen are not exempt.

Putin has clear responsibility for Ukraine atrocities

War crimes are defined, inter alia, as the deliberate or wilful targeting and killing of civilians and the destruction of property not justified by military necessity.

US president Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for his bombing of hospitals, maternity wards, schools and kindergartens, as well as regular air strikes and shelling of residential areas by the Russian armed forces. In a powerful video-link speech, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN that Russian war criminals must face a new Nuremberg-style trial.

Destroyed buildings seen in the town of Bucha, close to the capital Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo by AP Photo/Serhii Nuzhnenko

Horrific atrocities on civilians, committed by retreating Russian troops in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv are, quintessentially, war crimes.

The intentional air strike of the drama theatre in Mariupol, where over 1,000, mostly women and children were sheltering, could certainly be called a war crime.

The word “CHILDREN” had been written in huge Russian letters on each side of the venue. It is believed that more than 300 died in the dust and rubble of the collapsed building.

As the person who ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has clear “command responsibility”. Although Russia is not a signatory to the ICC, Putin – if we can get our hands on him – could nevertheless be hauled before a special tribunal set up by the US, UN, NATO and the EU.

‘Butchers’ old and new

Lieutenant Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov commanded the 64th Separate Motorised Brigade who butchered innocent men, women and children in Bucha, and he must face justice in the international courts.

Putin’s favourite general, Mikhail Mizintsev, should also be indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Dubbed “The Butcher of Mariupol” for his relentless bombardment and wanton destruction of that city, Colonel-General Mizintsev had previously honed his skills in the levelling of the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo.

In 2016, Russian forces under Mizintsev’s command joined with pro-Iranian Shi’ia militias, Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad’s military, to bombard Aleppo into submission, almost wiping it off the map.

Vladimir Putin has been accused by some world leaders of war crimes in Ukraine. Photo by Frederic Legrand/Shutterstock

Putin’s solid collaborator in Syria has been the fanatical supreme leader of the fundamentalist Iranian regime, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, unsurprisingly, has supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine and blamed the Americans for instigating the war.

Facing the collapse of the Iranian economy in the wake of decades of corruption, sanctions, untrammelled financing of proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, and an accelerating bid to build a nuclear weapon, Khamenei desperately engineered the sham election of Ebrahim Raisi as president of Iran.

Khamenei hoped that this hardline religious hanging judge, known as “The Butcher of Tehran” for his central role in sentencing over 30,000 political prisoners to death in 1988, would frighten the West into lifting sanctions and rejoining the tattered nuclear deal, abandoned by Trump in 2018.

We must hold war criminals to account

Khamenei’s plan has backfired spectacularly. When Iranian and British survivors of the 1988 massacre heard that Raisi was intending to travel to Glasgow in November last year to attend the COP26 climate change summit, they lodged a dossier of evidence with the Metropolitan Police and Police Scotland, calling for his arrest for crimes against humanity and genocide, under universal jurisdiction. Raisi quickly cancelled his plans to come to the UK.

The message must surely now be clear to Raisi, Khamenei, Bashar al-Assad and Putin that being a president does not provide impunity for crimes against humanity and human rights abuse.

In March 2016, only six years ago, Radovan Karadžić was found criminally responsible for the horror that tore Yugoslavia apart. Sentencing him to 40 years in jail for ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the judge told Karadžić that he was the author of a plan “to commission murder, terror and unlawful attacks against civilians.”

The parallels with the horrors unfolding in Ukraine are disturbing.

There must be no impunity for monsters like Ebrahim Raisi, Ali Khamenei, Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and their henchmen. The civilised world must hold them to account.

Struan Stevenson is the coordinator of the Campaign for Iran Change. He was a member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014), president of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009-14) and chairman of the Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (2004-14). He is an international lecturer on the Middle East and is also president of the European Iraqi Freedom Association. 

This article was first published by pressandjournal