Fatou Bensouda, requested authorisation from the Court’s Judges to initiate an investigation into the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in relation to the August 2008 Russian-Georgian War, the ICC webpage announced today.
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Rights groups welcomed the move Wednesday as a step toward justice for victims.
“This includes alleged crimes committed as part of a campaign to expel ethnic Georgians from South Ossetia as well as attacks on peacekeepers by Georgian forces, on the one hand, and South Ossetian forces, on the other”, ICC statement said.
After Russia “won” the war, the Kremlin recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another Georgian breakaway region, and proceeded to bring both under Russian influence.
“The Prosecutor estimates that the ethnic Georgian population in the conflict zone was reduced by at least 75 percent”, explained her office. Ossetians speak a language similar to those in Iran and have been fighting for autonomy for South Ossetia from Georgia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Prosecuters also claim there is evidence that Georgian and South Ossetian forces had both attacked peacekeepers with their shelling. Russia, which now recognizes South Ossetia as an independent state, sent in troops to help South Ossetian forces, and quickly retook the area.
Between July 1 and October. 10, 2008, up to 18,500 ethnic Georgians were forcibly displaced from the South Ossetian territory and majority of them had their homes destroyed and looted, according to the statement quoting Bensouda.
She also added that the first investigation found “killings, forcible displacements and persecution of ethnic Georgian civilians, and destruction and pillaging of their property, by South Ossetian forces”.
Bensouda argued that an ICC probe was necessary after Georgia’s own investigation into alleged war crimes during the conflict was indefinitely suspended.
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Judges must now decide whether to authorize a full probe, which would pit Russian Federation, which is not an ICC member, against the permanent European-backed global war crimes court at a time when East-West tensions are at their highest since the Cold War.
