Tribunal for Chechnya. Khramov: "Over ten years ago, Milosevic and his accomplices also rejected the idea of the tribunal, and supporters of his idea considered it to be morally justified but absolutely unrealistic".

Statement by Nikolaj Khramov, President of the Coordinating Committee of Russian Radicals, member of the General Council of the Transnational Radical Party

Moscow, April 3, 2003

The resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted yesterday, in which - for the first time at such level! - the task of establishment of a special international tribunal on war crimes and crimes against humanity in Chechnya was set, is undoubtedly an event of great importance which is to be resolutely welcomed.

Necessity of such ad hoc tribunal does not annul at all the fact of existence of the International Criminal Court whose jurisdiction is spread only to the countries which ratified its Statute (which Russia didn't do so far) and includes only crimes committed after such ratification. The special tribunal on Chechnya hence would be destined to try all war crimes committed in Chechnya not only in the future, but also in the past, irrespective of the fact who committed them: Russian servicemen, soldiers of the Chechen army, members of security troops of the ex-mufti Kadyrov or gangsters who don't obey anybody.

Certainly, the establishment of the ad hoc tribunal on Chechnya by the UN Security Council on the sample of tribunals on former Yugoslavia and on Ruanda, is hardly probable as Russia has the right of veto in the Security Council. Such tribunal created under aegis of the Council of Europe would not win the recognition of its jurisdiction on the part of Putin's Russia. All this is true. But the fact that Milosevic's Yugoslavia also did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ITFY and rejected the very idea of creation of such tribunal, also is true. If such tribunal is created under aegis of the Council of Europe and its jurisdiction is recognized by the states of Europe and the USA, it will produce consequences of great importance: figures accused by this tribunal of war crimes, will never be able to leave Russia under threat of arrest, except for "small safety islands" like China, North Korea and Cuba.

Anyway, all of us, supporters of peace, freedom, democracy and justice, should immediately engage in elaboration of concrete legal and political ways to creation of the international ad hoc tribunal on Chechnya. We should also start to prepare a wide international public campaign on the sample of those campaigns launched by the Transnational Radical Party which resulted in creation of both International Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Court. Which - we'll note in brackets - also were initially seen only as morally justified but absolutely unrealistic proposals.