The investigation by the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the situation in Georgia in 2008 once again showed hypocrisy and double standards in approaches to justice.
This is stated in a comment issued on Friday by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova in connection with the completion of the investigation by the ICC.
For 14 years of work, the ICC investigators, who do not understand the specifics of the region, but obediently fulfill the political order of the Western patrons of the court, turned the situation upside down and cynically exposed the injured party in this conflict as guilty," Zakharova said. "As a result, there are three arrest warrants for citizens of South Ossetia, who also have Russian citizenship, for the mythical oppression of ethnic Georgians," the diplomat said.
At the same time, according to her, such "obvious crimes as the barbaric bombing of peaceful Tskhinval by Georgian troops and the attack on peacekeepers are not of interest to the Hague justice." "Such blatant hypocrisy and double standards in approaches to justice once again confirm the correctness of the choice made by our country in favor of revoking the signature under the Rome Statute of the ICC," Zakharova stressed.
"We have no confidence in the structure created on its basis, it has nothing to do with justice," she added. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also reminded that "Russia does not cooperate with the ICC; the actions of this body in relation to citizens of the Russian Federation are legally null and void."
As noted by Zakharova, when investigating the situation in Georgia "both the voluminous materials of the Russian investigative bodies, which had been handed over to the prosecutor's office, and volumes with complaints from civilians became victims of the Georgian attack, were ignored."
“The ICC prosecutor is not concerned about the crimes of the Americans in Afghanistan, which it has openly declared,” the diplomat stressed. “Apparently, it is afraid of the next American sanctions that were once imposed on its predecessor. will deal with the recently publicized crimes in this country by the British Armed Forces." According to Zakharova, the crimes of compatriots of the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in Iraq remain unpunished.
