The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-10)

The Sunday Times April 10, 2022 2GN 19

‘Even Tory

MPs can’t get

refugees into

their homes —

it’s a nightmare’

refugees minister, is

understood on Thursday to

have instructed the Home

Office to change its processes,

with caseworkers now able to

clear applicants or sponsors

faster if they are flagged for

lower-level criminal offences.

Tensions between

ministers and officials are

believed to have boiled over

last week in high-level

meetings. Michael Gove, the

levelling-up secretary, was

said to have been visibly

angry over problems with the

scheme. In a move that

angered allies of Gove,

Matthew Rycroft, the Home

Office permanent secretary,

is understood to have

complained about his

behaviour to Jeremy

Pocklington, the permanent

secretary in Gove’s

department.

than 5,000 over the past

week. Under the scheme,

sponsors and refugees are

run through various

monitoring databases to

ensure they are suitable.

These include checking

sponsors’ records against the

Police National Computer,

which holds information on

convictions and cautions.

This is thought to have

resulted in thousands of

applications being flagged

during security checks,

though a senior government

source said the correct figure

was about 200.

Kearns said of the delays:

“The civil servants are saying

it takes time, it’s not that easy

— yes it is, just do it. I’m sorry

but I don’t believe it takes a

month, or however long the

thing has been open now.”

Lord Harrington, the

ANDREA CARRUBBA/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

The Ukrainian

authorities at a

mass grave in

Bucha. Colonel

General Mikhail

Mizintsev, below,

the “Butcher of

Mariupol”, is

among Russian

military leaders

linked to

suspected

war crimes

The bombing of

Kramatorsk

railway station in

eastern Ukraine

on Friday killed

and injured

dozens of

civilians trying to

flee the conflict

Kearns, 34, plans to house

the wife of a Ukrainian MP

and her sister who each have

one child, both under five. It

is almost two weeks since

they applied for visas using

forms that Kearns described

as “an utter nightmare”. One

MP in Kyiv told her that

constituents were being

advised not to apply for

asylum in Britain because “it

just takes too long”.

Priti Patel, the home

secretary, apologised on

Friday for visa delays after the

latest figures revealed that

only 1,200 refugees had

arrived under the homes

scheme. About 12,500 visas

of that type have been

granted to date and a further

31,000 Ukrainians are waiting

for visas to be approved by

the Home Office, with the

backlog increasing by more

visas — has been running a

“matching service” for

Ukrainian MPs. By law, the

politicians must stay at home

but Kearns is helping to get

their families out because

they are on Russian hitlists.

The MP for Rutland and

Melton said: “From the

Conservative Party, I know of

at least ten colleagues [who

are sponsoring Ukrainians].

Just two so far have got them

here. If Conservative MPs

can’t get people here what

hope do other people have at

the moment?”

She added that many of

her constituents were “up in

arms” over the delays. The

only Tories known to have got

refugees here are Duncan

Baker, MP for North Norfolk,

and Victoria Prentis, the

environment minister and

North Oxfordshire MP.

At least ten Conservative

politicians have sponsored

Ukrainian refugees to come to

the UK but only two have

managed to get them here,

according to an MP who is

waiting to welcome a family.

More than three weeks

after the Homes For Ukraine

scheme began, it continues to

be beset by bureaucratic

problems. Last night it was

claimed that hundreds of

refugees have faced delays in

receiving visas because they

or their sponsors have

convictions for minor

offences such as speeding or

being drunk and disorderly.

Alicia Kearns, a Tory

backbencher who has

sponsored four Ukrainians —

all of whom are yet to receive

Hugo Daniel, Rachel Lavin

and Harry Yorke

Officials

say it’s

not easy.

Yes it is

gious group”. To prosecute for genocide

under international law, this threshold

must be shown to have been met. Some

lawyers feel Russia has not passed it.

Yet Jordash believes Zelensky has a

point. “On the ground, there’s a growing

destructive element which may involve

the attempt to destroy part of the

Ukrainian people — combined with the

rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin about

Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he says.

At the very least, experts believe Russia

stands guilty of “crimes of aggression” — a

new ICC rule that involves the “use of

armed force by a state against the sover-

eignty, territorial integrity or political

independence of another state”.

Yet Ukraine itself is not guilt-free.

Videos have emerged appearing to show

troops killing Russian prisoners of war,

which is a direct violation of the Geneva

convention and, if true, a war crime.

Russia has opened a criminal case.

HOW TO PROSECUTE

A WAR CRIME

The first stage is gathering evidence.

“We’ve been doing this since the start,”

says Nadia Volkova, director of the

Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group, which

has been collecting emails, videos and

photos of crimes in Ukraine since 2015.

“We developed a special forum for peo-

ple who want to talk to us,” she adds.

Six weeks since the start of the inva-

sion, almost 5,000 incidents classified as

war crimes by Iryna Venediktova,

Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, are being

investigated. Open source intelligence is a

“game changer”, according to Whiting.

The ICC has launched an online portal

for people to upload evidence. Organisa-

tions like Bellingcat, which collates open

source intelligence to report on conflicts,

are sharing data on civilian attacks.

The crucial thing is proving the con-

nection between the act and the perpetra-

tor. “Most crimes in an armed context

have multiple people who are responsi-

ble,” Jordash says.

Prosecutors also have more to prove.

“How we get from anecdotes to proving

war crimes is the pattern and practice,”

explains Brian Root, an analyst at Human

Rights Watch. “We are trying to establish

that these are not one-off events but sys-

temic, and that there’s a chain of com-

mand responsible.”

The next stage is arrest. The ICC can

either issue a summons for the suspect to

appear or an arrest warrant may be put

out (although it is up to individual coun-

tries to make arrests). Twelve people

indicted by the ICC are on the run. The

statute states “the accused shall be

present”, ruling out trials in absentia.

Although the ICC is actively investigat-

ing Russia, any country can bring cases

for war crimes. Ukrainian activists are

HENNADII MINCHENKO/ UKRINFORM/FUTURE PUBLISHING/GETTY IMAGES

5,000 war crimes, 80 suspects already

identified: the fight for justice begins

When the survivors of the Bucha massa-
cre emerged last week to bury their dead,
Artem Starosiek — 260 miles away in the
Ukrainian city of Dnipro — was hunting
the perpetrators.
He is chief executive of Molfar, a risk-as-
sessment and analysis firm that normally
deals with corporate clients. Since the
invasion he has worked with thousands of
researchers around the world to help to
investigate Russian war crimes.
“We’re using social media to track
down soldiers we know were in Bucha,”
Starosiek, 30, says. “We’ve identified 80
out of 1,060 troops so far, working closely
with the cyberpolice of Ukraine. We can
get their phone numbers, addresses, fam-
ilies and even criminal records.”
War crimes are very hard to investigate
and just as difficult to prosecute. Just 46
people have been publicly indicted by the
International Criminal Court (ICC) since
its inception in 2002, and only two people
are serving sentences, with another six
having finished theirs. It took two dec-
ades to bring some of the perpetrators of
the Bosnian war to justice.
But there were no smartphones in Bos-
nia. In this war, atrocities are being cap-
tured through leaked recordings, videos
on the ground and analysis of records on
the web. This network of “open source
intelligence”, which means gathering
information from publicly available
resources, may speed up the process.
Days into the invasion, 38 nations —
including Britain — voted to expedite an
investigation into Russian war crimes at
the ICC, the largest referral in its history.
World leaders have openly accused
Russia of war crimes but, for the first
time, it is ordinary citizens from across
the globe who are collaborating to help
bring perpetrators to justice.

WHAT IS A WAR CRIME?
Although some practices had been out-
lawed for centuries, many of the rules of
modern warfare were not established
until the late 19th century. The 1899
Hague Convention on land warfare —
agreed by 50 countries — banned “pillag-
ing”, attacking undefended towns and
destroying property unless “imperatively
demanded by the necessities of war”. The
horrors of the next century show how lit-
tle those rules were stuck by.
Wayne Jordash QC, a human rights law-
yer at Doughty Street Chambers, working
in Ukraine for the not-for-profit Global
Rights Compliance, says: “The rules of
war are an encouragement to better
behaviour. Yet they’re only as good as the

enforcement that follows or doesn’t fol-

low. They are important but often sadly

ignored.”

The Geneva conventions, updated in

1949 and agreed by all United Nations

countries, describe most of the rules that

are supposed to govern legitimate

conflicts. They include protection for

prisoners of war and civilians, and the

banning of certain weapons and torture.

The ICC was set up with the express

purpose of bringing war criminals to

justice. Not every country is signed up or

has ratified it, including Russia, the US

and Ukraine, although the latter has

agreed to accept the court’s judgment.

The statute pays particular attention to

the rights of ordinary citizens: serious vio-

lations include “intentionally directing

attacks against the civilian population”

who are not taking part in conflict.

‘EXECUTED IN THE STREET’

Since the start of the invasion, Russia’s

attacks have devastated Ukraine’s civilian

infrastructure. The Armed Conflict Loca-

tion & Event Data Project has logged at

least 21 attacks on hospitals, 18 on schools

and four on religious buildings.

The UN has recorded at least 1,600 con-

firmed civilian deaths, although pictures

from the ravaged city of Mariupol alone

suggest that is a gross underestimate.

Proving Russia intentionally targeted

those buildings based on the damage

alone is difficult, says Alex Whiting, visit-

ing professor at Harvard Law School. He

was a lead prosecutor for the war crime

trials of main actors in the Bosnian war.

“You have to prove that ... it wasn’t a

mistake; there were no military targets

nearby,” he says.

Yet the horrors reported last week —

including the bodies at Bucha, the mass

graves in Chernihiv, and the Kramatorsk

station attack on Friday — are different.

Recordings have even emerged of gener-

als giving orders to kill. “This is civilians

being executed in the street ... those, on

the face of it, appear quite clearly to be

war crimes,” Whiting says.

Such episodes, Jordash believes, could

go further than war crimes — acts commit-

ted by individual actors — and may consti-

tute crimes against humanity, in which

civilians are purposefully targeted on

behalf of a state. The first prosecution for

crimes against humanity was at the

Nuremberg trials in 1945-46.

Last week President Zelensky accused

Russia of genocide, which the UN defines

as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in

part, a national, ethnical, racial or reli-

calling for a hybrid trial that happens via

its domestic court but is backed by the

ICC, the Council of Europe or the UN.

THE SUSPECTS

When prosecuting war crimes, the ICC

typically focuses on senior military and

political leaders, Whiting says, although

cases against “lower-level actors” “for

particularly notorious crimes” can also be

brought.

“If the apparent crimes in Bucha are

confirmed and perpetrators are identi-

fied, either the ICC or Ukrainian prosecu-

tors may decide to act quickly and charge

the direct perpetrators,” he adds.

Quick intelligence has already led to

the identification of those accused of the

war’s most barbaric crimes. One is Colo-

nel General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of

Russia’s National Centre for Defence Man-

agement, dubbed the Butcher of Mariu-

pol for leading the siege that has damaged

up to 90 per cent of the city. Now subject

to British sanctions, he was in charge of

the Russian bombing of Aleppo in Syria.

Last week Frank-Walter Steinmeier,

the German president, called for a war

crimes tribunal against President Putin

and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign

minister. Yet establishing that senior fig-

ures are responsible for horrors on the

ground often requires testimony from

insiders, Jordash says. “This is the dirty

secret of international trials — they rely on

those that themselves are accomplices.”

WILL JUSTICE EVER BE DONE?

Putin being tried in a courtroom is not an

“immediate prospect”, says Jordash. But,

he adds, international law is “quite

patient”. The “Butcher of Bosnia”, Rado-

van Karadzic, for example, was only

found guilty of genocide by the ICC in

2016, 20 years after the end of the war.

“The offences that are coming to light

remind me very much of the testimonies

we saw during the Rwandan genocide, or

the Sierra Leone civil war. We have a level

of savagery, while military purpose seems

to be lacking,” Jordash says.

Whiting is optimistic that cases against

some figures can be brought quickly, per-

haps in “the next few months”, despite

the chances of a trial remaining slim.

Even if very senior figures cannot feasi-

bly be hauled before court, building a

case is still important. “It matters to vic-

tims and their families,” says Jordash.

“Sometimes they want prison sentences,

sometimes they want their relatives to be

found. Sometimes, though, they just want

the truth.”

After Bucha, Chernihiv and Kramatorsk, Tom Calver asks if smartphone evidence can bring to court those responsible