Before Putin, three heads of state indicted by ICC

Jakarta, CNNIndonesia —

A number of parties have doubts Vladimir Putin can actually be tried even if the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant against the president Russia.

Doubt is not without reason. This is because, throughout history, only a handful of heads of state have been able to be indicted at the ICC while still in office.

Of those few people, only one person actually attended trial at the ICC.

One of the root causes of the problem is that the ICC does not have its own police force. As a result, the ICC had to rely on local state police to surrender their targets.

They can also ask for help from other ICC member countries if the target sets foot on their territory.

Seeing how complicated the rules of the legal process at the ICC are, the head of state that is the target of the international court is always in the spotlight.

Here are three of them.

1. The President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir

Omar al-Bashir became the first state leader to be indicted by the ICC while still in office, in March 2009.

As reported by the Associated Press, at that time al-Bashir was charged with alleged genocide in the Darfur region.

However, al-Bashir was never brought to court by the ICC. During his tenure, he was even able to freely travel to a number of ICC member countries, which should have been obliged to hand over al-Bashir.

These countries include Chad, Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda.

They refused to comply with a warrant for al-Bashar’s arrest issued by the ICC, angering the international court.

The situation changed when al-Bashir was put in a coup in 2019. About a year later, on February 11, 2020 to be precise, the Sudanese government announced they agreed to hand over al-Bashir to the ICC.

However, until now there has been no further news regarding al-Bashir’s trial at the ICC.