Guatemala will join the Core Group on the Special Tribunal for the Russian crime of aggression, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said after meeting his Guatemalan counterpart on Feb. 24.
“In New York, I was glad to meet with [Guatemala’s Foreign Minister] Mario Búcaro. Guatemala is our true friend. We discussed joint efforts to hold Russia accountable, including for the crime of aggression,” Kuleba tweeted.
Guatemala is the first Latin American country to confirm their participation in the EU-led initiative.
From the time it was first conceived as a concept, the crime of aggression was considered a leadership crime—that of leaders who devise state policies that exclude followers, among others, from criminal liability. It was prosecuted for the first time at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal after World War II.
The European Parliament on Jan. 19 adopted a resolution calling on member states to back the creation of a special international tribunal to judge Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine, specifically the crime of aggression. The resolution urged the EU member states to “immediately” prepare for the tribunal's creation in cooperation with Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating some 70,000 cases of war crimes and crimes of aggression allegedly committed by Russian troops since the beginning of the full-scale invasion a year ago.
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