This week’s Justice Update is all about the new Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression – created specifically to hold the Russian Federation to account for its war of aggression in Ukraine.

We are still getting our heads around the details. Check out the new statute here. There’s a lot to understand about what it could mean for victims in Ukraine, how trying top military and political individuals in absentia (meaning, while they are not physically attending their own trial) will work, and how immunities will still exist for the so-called Troika – the heads of state, of government and the foreign minister.

To that end, Steph attended a panel event on this Special Tribunal and caught up with Dr Veronika Plotnikova – Head of the Coordination Center for Victims and Witnesses at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, Dr Mark Ellis – Executive Director of the International Bar Association, and Ambassador Andriy Kostin – Ukranian ambassador to the Netherlands and former Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

We know that this new Special Tribunal is the result of several years worth of negotiations on how to have an international tribunal which could hold the highest individuals accountable for the crime of aggression. It’s set against the backdrop of the International Criminal Court’s own long-negotiated provisions to try the crime of aggression which leave that court only able to act in extremely limited circumstances (check our last podcast with Christian Wenawaser and Gabija Grigaitė-Daugirdė on the special ICC session in July which tried and failed to agree a new set of parameters on aggression for that court and on how this tribunal’s statute dealing with the crimes of aggression what gotten over the line).

In contrast to the ICC, which as an international court has no immunity provisions for leaders in or out of power for alleged international crimes committed where it has a mandate, the new Special Tribunal accepts personal immunities for the three most senior (check out Article 23 parts 4 and 5). The Special Tribunal’s role there will be to do the legal legwork, but then the process will stop. And only when the Troika leave office – their immunity lapses and they are ‘fair game’ so to speak.

For all kinds of other senior leaders the new Special Tribunal prosecutor will be figuring out who is at fault and for which acts of aggression following the invasion of Ukraine. But also in contrast to the ICC, the new Special Tribunal can have trials in absentia. It can therefore identify and actually try these individuals, even without their presence. And we have the second part of this podcast already planned – listen out for another episode really honing in on the trials in absentia issue and how that will work with Mark Ellis, next month.

Make sure to listen all the way through as we discuss the questions still left unanswered, including whether we may see Special Tribunal prisoners in Scheveningen in the near future and which court might take precedence in bringing a person to trial in The Hague.

Oh yes, this is a story that will run and run…