International Criminal Court To Support Joint Investigation Team On Ukraine - Eurojust

The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague will aid the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate alleged crimes in Ukraine, the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) said on Monday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th April, 2022) The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague will aid the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to investigate alleged crimes in Ukraine, the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust) said on Monday.

The JIT, established with the Eurojust's support on March 25 by Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, aims to facilitate investigations and prosecutions in the concerned states, as well as those that can be referred to the ICC.

The office of the Prosecutor of the ICC in the Hague will become a participant in the JIT on alleged core international crimes committed in Ukraine, the statement read.

The agreement was signed between ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan and the prosecutors of the three founding countries of the investigation team.

On March 2, the ICC prosecutor's office launched an investigation into Russia's actions in Ukraine. On March 11, Khan said that the court's investigative team had begun collecting evidence as part of the investigation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia rejected Kiev's accusations of war crimes in Ukraine and recalled that it is not an ICC participant. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Khan's actions demonstrate the desire to contribute to anti-Russian hysteria in the United States and the European Union. She added that "neither the bloody unconstitutional coup in Kiev, nor the burning of people alive in Odessa, nor years of crimes against the residents of Donbas have so far become the reason to intensify the investigation."

On February 24, Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk appealed for help in defending themselves against Ukrainian forces. Moscow said that the aim of its operation is the "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine."