Statement by Deputy Permanent Representative Gennady Kuzmin at the Security Council Briefing on the International Criminal Court Sudan
Thank you, Mr. President,
I will be brief.
As before, we see no progress in investigating the situation in Darfur. The circle of the accused remains unchanged. I am not going to comment on the domestic situation in Sudan. For this purpose, there are other specialized Security Council formats that effectively operate without participation of the ICC Prosecutor.
What do we see? During the reporting period, the ICC continued its practical and research experiments on the States Parties to the ICC Statute. Upon Jordan’s appeal, on 6 May, the ICC concluded that there is no Head of State immunity under customary international law vis-à-vis a competent international court. Which is strange, because all the previous practice of “hunting” Omar Al-Bashir proved the opposite – all States he had visited as President of the Republic of the Sudan, acknowledged his immunity and refrained from arresting him.
To start an international custom, it is important to observe the historical retrospective. He distinguished representative of the United Kingdom mentioned a memorable date. Let me mention another one. This month will mark 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles. There is Article 227, where the Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraigned William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor “for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties” and decided to constitute a special international tribunal. This plan however was never brought to life. The monarchy of the Netherlands – a State which is rather active in terms of international justice today – flatly refused to extradite the former German Emperor.
Position of Russia regarding immunity of States’ highest officials is well-known. The ICC position according to which the question of immunity should not be considered in this case is flawed and dangerous. The effective international law stipulates immunity of highest officials to criminal jurisdiction of foreign states, without touching upon the issue of jurisdiction of international criminal justice bodies. In this situation, when a State restricts freedom of a foreign State official, it invariably encroaches into the domain of inter-State relations. The State in question then should operate in the framework of such relations, while strictly abiding by provisions of the international law about the immunity to foreign criminal jurisdiction.
We call upon State Parties to the ICC to be reasonable and keep from steps that might provoke inter-State tension.
Thank you.
