The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, does not believe his office can conduct its investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine “alone.”
Khan, whose comments came Tuesday during a panel interview with the U.S. Institute of Peace, agreed to join the joint investigative team, which consists of Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, to look into international crimes committed by Russian forces a day before the event.
“I think the idea that the ICC is an apex court and can do all of it alone is not accurate,” he explained. “The types of crimes by way of scale and gravity that constitute, or may constitute, offenses of genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes, require partnerships.”
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It will be a “participant” in the investigative team, which he noted was the “first time in the history of the office of the prosecutor” that it joined a JIT, though Khan said his office will “conduct [its] own independent investigations” as well.
“But as I have underlined to our national counterparts, the participation of my office in this JIT will not be a one-way street,” Khan said in a statement announcing the JIT. “We do not wish to only be the recipients of information and evidence. We also want to serve as an effective partner with respect to the conduct of domestic proceedings in relation to core international crimes, in line with the principle of complementarity.”
During a trip to Kyiv two weeks ago, Khan called Ukraine a “crime scene,” though he was quick to point out that as a prosecutor, impartiality is a prerequisite. Khan’s team has “reasonable grounds” to believe Russian troops committed war crimes, though he noted Wednesday that “we have to pierce the fog of war to get to the truth. That requires independent, impartial investigation.”
Russian troops have been accused of a range of actions that could constitute war crimes, from the targeting of civilians and indiscriminate firing near civilian areas to gender-based crimes, such as rape, and attacks on healthcare facilities. Thousands of civilians have been killed, and it’s unclear how high the death toll really is given the fog of war and the difficulties of tallying bodies in areas still under Russian control.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said her office has already opened 8,000 cases into alleged war crimes and has identified 500 suspects so far, including Russian government ministers and military commanders, according to Voice of America.
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Ukrainian officials have used the U.S.-based Clearview AI software to identify captured or dead Russian soldiers, the total number of which is unknown, though U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Monday that the number of Russian troops killed in action is roughly 15,000.
GOP Sen. Steve Daines of Montana was the first senator to travel to Ukraine since Russia invaded Feb. 24, and while he was in Bucha, Ukrainian investigators found a booklet left behind that contained the personal information of a Russian military unit.
