The Russian government has placed International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan on its wanted list after the court indicted President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes, according to reports on Friday, May 19.
Interior ministry seeks to detain Karim Khan after the Hague-based court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin for allegedly overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children.
Khan who has served as the ICC prosecutor since 2021 Khan played an intimate role in the arrest warrant against Putin.
He visited Ukraine four times in the year before the accusations were made public, leading to a ruling that ‘there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility’ for the child abductions.
Khan’s photo and personal information are visible on the Interior Ministry’s search database, according to reports but the ministry’s listing does not specify which crime Khan is accused of.
The Hague-based ICC had announced an arrest warrant for Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in March on the war crime accusation of illegally deporting Ukrainian children.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, opened a criminal investigation against Khan in March based on the ICC’s ‘unlawful’ decision to seek Putin’s arrest.
The Investigative Committee said Khan was being investigated on the grounds of ‘criminal prosecution of a person known to be innocent… and preparation of an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection.’
More than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia since the February 24, 2022, invasion, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov this month called the ICC ‘a puppet in the hands of the so-called collective West,’ referring to Putin’s arrest warrant.
