Failing criminal prosecution, will time run out on the Russian wannabe-czar?

 Living in Canada for the better part of some eight decades, I have been almost blind to the role and significance of something called Interpol. The International Police Commission, I would have considered one of the protections against what we formerly considered to be international crime. And, only this week, when the arrest of vladimir putin seemed like one of the few paths to terminating this massacre in Ukraine, did the issue of Interpol take shape in my mind. Could not Interpol begin the process of putting the Russian criminal on their most wanted list, and then begin the process of finding and arresting him, in order to prosecute him for the multiple war crimes, and the crimes against humanity he is obviously committing hourly in Ukraine?

I have been deeply aware for a considerable time that the notion of international collaboration, shared commitment and a strong and united phalanx of nations is and will continue to be essential to combat what are international crises including global warming and climate change, the pandemic, world poverty and starvation, and income inequality, human rights abuses and state terror.

However, the tokenism of many states and leaders to an international world order that sought a healthy environment and ethos for all of the globe’s inhabitants is blatantly obvious, if only we look at the historically tepid and disdainful relationship between the United States and the United Nations. Who can forget that not that long ago, media magnate Ted Turner, the founder of the CNN 24-7-365 news outlet headquartered in Atlanta, actually paid the membership dues of the United States to the United Nations, in order to keep his homeland in good standing at the august, if somewhat emasculated body?

So began a modest search for the nature and history of Interpol, from the scarcity of coverage in the public media. In Canada, the international police agency gets barely a mention in the national press. However, in 2018, in the Washington Post, and then reprinted in the National Post in Canada, Vladimir Kara-Murza, on November 20, 2018, wrote a piece entitled, “Analysis: Vladimir Putin is about to gain control of Interpol, the world’s main law enforcement organization”. Biographical footnotes on the piece read: Kara-Murza is a Russian historian, filmmaker, and democracy activist. He is Vice Chairman of the Open Russia movement and chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. The piece was prompted by the proposal of a Russian nominee of putin’s to become the head of Interpol. Excerpts of the Kara-Murza piece follow:

Unlike other international organizations, Interpol does not list its former presidents on its official website. (This has now changed; they are now listed on the website.) There is good reason for this. Between 1940 and 1945, the organization—then known as the International Criminal Police Commission—was led, successively, by three Nazi war criminals: SS General Rienhard Heydrich, the chief architect of the Holocaust; SS General Arthur Nebe, who, as the head of Einsatzgruppe B was responsible for murdering tens of thousands of Jews in Poland and Belarus; and SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, founder of the Mauthausen concentration camp and one of the main instigators of the Holocaust, who was hanged at Nuremburg for crimes against humanity. It is a page in its history the International Criminal Police Organization would rather forget. Putin’s regime is no Third Reich—but his actions at home and abroad are a travesty to very concept of the rule of law….

At the same time as Kara-Murza was writing in the Washington Post, November 19, 2018, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was reporting on the same issue of a potential Russian president for Interpol. The piece is entitled, Ukraine Threatens to Suspend Interpol Membership If Russian Elected President. It reads in part as follows:

‘Russia’s possible presidency at Interpol is absurd and contradicts the spirit and goals of that organization,’ a Ukrainian Interior Ministry statement cited Avakov (Ukraine’s Interior Minister) as saying on November 19. Avakov had earlier warned that having a Russian at the helm of Interpol would pose a ‘hybrid threat to the whole world.’

Josh Jacobs, writing in The Guardian, October 17, 2021, in a piece entitled “Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?”:

First mooted in 1914, Interpol was established in 1923, in large part to stop people from committing crimes in one country and fleeing elsewhere with impunity. The organization has been misused by oppressive regimes before-in 1938, The Nazis ousted Interpol’s president and later relocated in the organization to Berlin. Most countries withdrew and it ceased to exist as an international organization until after the second world war. The 194 member states support searches for war criminals, drug kingpins and people who have evaded justice for decades. Its red notices are seen as a vital tool and the closet thing to an international arrest warrant, leading to the location of thousands of fugitives each year. Red-notice* subjects have included Osama bin Laden and Saadi Gaddafi, the son of Libya’s former dictator. As criminals move around an increasingly interconnected world and terrorist incidents increased, the use of Interpol’s system has mushroomed. In the past two decades, red notices increased tenfold, from about 1,200 in 2000 to almost 12,000 last year. Alongside the growth of the most-wanted list, international legal experts say there has also been an alarming phenomenon of countries using Interpol for political gain or revenge-targeting nationals abroad such as political rivals, critics, activists and refugees. It is not known how many of the roughly 66,000active red notices could be based on politically motivated charge; Interpol does not release data on how many red notices it rejects…Seeking to manipulate Interpol is a feature of transnational repression, in which countries extend their reach overseas to silence or target adversaries…

The Guardian, on January 18, 2022 reports in a piece by The Associated Press, entitled, “Torture complaint filed against new president of Interpol.” Maj Gen Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi ‘was elected for a four-year term as Interpol president in November. He has been accused by human rights groups of involvement in torture and arbitrary detentions in the UAE…

So we are unable to contemplate any glimmer of hope that Interpol has either the capacity or the will even to issue a red notice on Putin, who has used the device multiple times to build the political ‘moat’ around the Kremlin. On March 3, 2022, Rachel Gilmore of Global News, reports, “Canada is calling for Russia’s membership in the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) to be suspended, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday. (Trudeau said) ‘We’re supporting this because we believe that international law enforcement co-operation depends on a collective commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mutual respect between INTERPOL members.’

From the website, utkaltoday.com, we learn: In a major difference between the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and the ICC (International Criminal Court), the ICC has around 105 members. Some countries, like the US have never joined the ICC. The IJC has as its members all the members of the United Nations, which means around 193 countries

The territorial jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is restricted to its member states.

We also note, sadly, as reported by the website www.ijc-cij.org, China, like  America and Russia is not a member of the ICJ.  (Also) The International Court of Justice has no jurisdiction to try individuals accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. As it is not a criminal court, it does not have a prosecutor able to initiate proceedings.

So, the patterns of history continue to repeat, apparently. Nuremburg trials may have addresses individuals who committed gross crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, one can only guess that there are many reasons why international bodies, like the United Nations, are tilted in both their structure and their purpose toward humanitarian issues. Reining in a state terrorist like putin falls through the cracks of international legal and law enforcement agencies. Is this another of the multiple bows to national sovereignty that ham-string the Security Council, with five states having a veto over all attempts to neutralize actions and motives that are slaughtering, displacing, wounding and decimating the land, and the people of Ukraine?

This war is not restricted, either in its definition by the aggressor, nor in its  application by, for, and to the rest of the world, to a Russia-Ukraine conflict. Yesterday’s bombing of the NATO-deployed training facility only kilometers from the Ukraine-Poland border, is a blatant thumbing of the nose of the Russian czar, almost daring Biden, the United States and NATO to ‘take off the gloves’ as it were, and cross their own ‘red line’. Power-addicted maniacs, like alcohol and drug-addicted individuals, need their ‘fix’ and they will take whatever measures are needed to achieve their “medication”…in this case, the military, political, cultural and historical domination of a proud, creative, courageous and crumbling people and nation.

There is apparently, a broad base to the notion that only those actions that some legal framework considers out-of-bounds, contrary to the law, criminal, and prosecutable, can and will be prosecuted. We champion the ‘rule of law’ and as opposed to the law of the jungle, it is preferable. However, creating a snare/trap/definition/crime/law that is both expansive and highly sophisticated in its targeting, along with the resources needed to make such a law’s enforcement feasible and accountable, needs a geo-political culture that sees the nation-state players willing to concede that they are willing to enter into such a collaborative arrangement. The surrender of a portion of national sovereignty is a legitimate and reasonable price to pay for the people of the globe. Unfortunately, many leaders and governments are unwilling to pay such a price. And nationalism, including white supremacy, grows like a malignant and devouring monster.

History, however, like the swiftly flowing river it is, has offered multiple examples in the last several decades, that would point to the need for and the relevance of muscular international co-operation. And perhaps, beyond the headlines and the carnage, there are vibrations of hope over the longer term. Perhaps.

Yuval Noah Harari argues that what’s at stake in Ukraine is the direction of human history, in The Economist, February 9, 2022. Harari writes: Contrary to popular misconceptions, the first clear evidence for organized warfare appears in the archeological record only 13,000 years ago. Even after that date, there have been many periods devoid of archeological evidence for war. Unlike gravity, war isn’t a fundamental force of nature. Its intensity and existence depend on underlying technological, economic and cultural factors. As these factors change, so does war. Evidence of such change is all around us. Over the past few generations, nuclear weapons have turned war between superpowers into a mad act of collective suicide, forcing the most powerful nations on Earth to find less violent ways to resolve conflict. Whereas great-power wars, such as the second Punic war or the second world war, have been a salient feature for much of history, in the past seven decades there has been no direct war between superpowers. During the same period, the global economy has been transformed from one based on materials to one based on knowledge. Where once the main sources of wealth were material assets such as gold mines, wheat fields and oil wells, today the main source of wealth in knowledge. And whereas you can seize oils fields by force, you cannot acquire knowledge that way. The profitability of conquest has declined as a result. Finally, a tectonic shift has taken place in global culture. Many elites in history-Hun chieftains, Viking jarls and Roman Patricians, for example –viewed war positively. Rulers from Sargon the Great to Benito Mussolini sought to immortalise themselves by conquest (and artists such as Homer and Shakespeare happily obliged such fancies). Other elites, such as the Christian church view war as evil but inevitable. In the past few generations, however, for the first time in history the world became dominated by elites who see war as both evil and avoidable.

The question facing the world, both its peoples and its leaders, today, is whether or not this optimistic historical pattern is being challenged by putin’s aggressive war of acquisition, disruption and insurrection. If our hope is anchored among the Russian people, many of whom are being arrested while many more are fleeing their totalitarian homeland, we seem to be in another waiting game. The game to see whether peace negotiations can put and end to this before the slaughter of the Ukrainian people forces them to surrender, and the waiting game on whether the Russian people can and will summon the courage, the fortitude and the iconoclastic will to bring putin down before the numbers of their war protesters falls to a mere rump…both keep ticking their time-bomb implications before our eyes.

While truth’s demise is blaring from every screen and microphone, and the refugee numbers mount before our ears and eyes, the clock keeps ticking. And perhaps its inexorable tick-tock carries with it the beating of the human heart of compassion, empathy and eventually the humane lava-floe of Harari’s history.

  

*Abusive red notices are intended to send a menacing message; you may leave your country but you can still be punished.