The former chief prosecutor of United Nations has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press reports.
Carla Del Ponte pointed to mass graves, attacks on civilians, the destruction of civilian buildings and the demolishing of entire villages, as evidence of clear war crimes being committed in Ukraine.
“Putin is a war criminal,” Ponte told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in an interview promoting her new book.
Ponte, who was in charge of prosecutions of war crime tribunals for the UN in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda said she is shocked by the sight of mass graves in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, which recalls the worst of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
“I hoped never to see mass graves again,” she told the newspaper Blick. “These dead people have loved ones who don’t even know what’s become of them. That is unacceptable.”
The current International Criminal Court chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, visited Ukraine last month.
Ponte said if the ICC finds evidence of war crimes they “must go up the chain of command until you reach those who took the decisions.”
“You mustn’t let go, continue to investigation. When the investigation into Slobodan Milosevic began, he was still president of Serbia. Who would have thought then that he would one day be judged? Nobody,” she said.
Ponte said investigations should be carried out into possible war crimes committed by both sides, pointing to reports about the alleged torture of some Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian forces.
