The accusations brought by the International Criminal Court against three citizens of South Ossetia are based on false facts and are a political order. This is stated in the comments of the Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of South Ossetia, Inal Tasoev, published on the website of the Presidential Executive Office of the Republic.
The Ombudsman has reacted to the issuance of arrest warrants by the ICC in The Hague for three South Ossetian former officials whom the court suspects of war crimes committed during the "Five-Day War" of 2008. The International Criminal Court announced this on its website on Friday.
“As you know, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, as part of an investigation into the events of August 2008, a few months ago sent a request to the pre-trial chamber for the issuance of warrants for the arrest of ex-Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of South Ossetia Mikhail Mindzaev, the former head of the pre-trial detention center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of South Ossetia Hamlet Guchmazov and former Presidential Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic David Sanakoev, who had been holding their positions in August 2008 during Georgia's armed aggression against the Republic of South Ossetia,” Tasoev said.
According to him, on June 30, 2022, this request was granted and the arrest warrants were issued.
“These actions, unfortunately, did not come as a surprise, but only confirmed without a doubt that the ICC today continues to be an obedient instrument in the hands of the West,” the Ombudsman has emphasized.
He has added that the ICC was established in 1998 as the first permanent international criminal justice body with competence to prosecute those responsible for genocide, war crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression.
“However, over time, the ICC, unfortunately, has not become a truly independent and authoritative body of justice. On the contrary, during this time it earned himself a very bad reputation, demonstrating political partisanship, confirming its bias and selectivity in the application of international law.
All this, unfortunately, we can see very clearly in our own example, how Georgia is gradually turning from an aggressor country into an injured party. Although, according to the work of an independent commission of the European Union headed by Heidi Tagliavini, created to investigate the facts of August 2008, it was found that on the night of August 7-8, 2008, Georgia was the first to commit a full-scale armed aggression against the population of South Ossetia using heavy artillery, armored vehicles and military aviation. Despite this, over the years, the ICC has not carried out a single procedural action in relation to the crimes committed by the Georgian military and officials against the population of South Ossetia,” Inal Tasoev has specified.
He has added that the bias of European justice can be seen in the example of several thousand complaints of our citizens sent in 2008 to both the ICC and the ECtHR.
“The complaints describe in detail: how the lives of civilians were exposed to a mortal threat, how residential areas were being shelled, even close to military facilities, how their property was destroyed before the eyes of people, how they were forced to sit in cold basements around the clock, unable to feed their children.
All these statements-complaints were accompanied by irrefutable evidence. However, they were ignored by international courts, which made and continue to make the biased and illegal decisions,” the human rights activist has stressed.
Referring to the arrest warrants issued and the charges brought by the ICC against our citizens, Tasoev noted that "they are based on false facts and are a political order, given the time that the ICC chose to extradite them."
“The Russian Federation does not participate in the Rome Statute of the ICC; therefore, this structure does not have jurisdiction over the territory of Russia and South Ossetia or their citizens,” he noted.
