Arrest warrant against Putin to be executed if he comes to Germany, says German justice minister

BERLIN (AA) - German Justice Minister Marco Bushman has said that he will execute an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin if he sets foot on German soil.

"I expect that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will swiftly approach Interpol as well as the contracting states and ask them for enforcement," Bushman told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

According to Bushman, Germany would then be obliged to detain Putin if he enters German territory and hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Even before Bushman, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had welcomed the ICC arrest warrant against Putin during his trip to Japan on Saturday, saying that "no one is above the law."

On Friday, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Putin and his representative for children's rights.

"Today, 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court ... issued arrest warrants against two individuals in connection with the situation in Ukraine: Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms. Maria Alekseevna Lvova-Belova," the statement said.

The ICC accuses Putin of being "responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of the population (children) and unlawful transfer of the population (children) from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."

The court said there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that Putin bore "individual criminal responsibility" for the crimes cited.