The investigations into war crimes committed in Ukraine should be better coordinated. In order to achieve this, the justice ministers of the G7 countries met in Berlin this Tuesday.
Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) had also invited a delegation from Ukraine to the consultations. He said improved cooperation is about preserving evidence and avoiding duplication. Victims who gave testimonies, for example, should not have to testify repeatedly about their traumatizing experiences. The meeting sent out the signal: “War crimes must not go unpunished.”
Open to discussion
The government in Kyiv advocates a special tribunal to prosecute Russian crimes in Ukraine. Ukraine wants such a tribunal to deal with the international crime of aggression. “We are open to discussing this,” said EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders.
Reynders and Buschmann also see room for improvement in enforcing the sanctions imposed on Russia in response to the war of aggression that began in February. In a guest article that the FDP politician wrote together with the French Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti for the “Legal Tribune Online”, it says: “As Ministers of Justice in France and Germany, we believe that we are going further than that and sanctions violations are not only punish together, but also prosecute together. That is why we advocate that the competence of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office be extended to violations of restrictive measures of the European Union.”
Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the USA and Great Britain also belong to the G7 association of economically strong democracies. Germany will hold the presidency until the end of the year, and Japan will assume the presidency in 2023.
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