At an informal meeting in Stockholm, EU Justice Ministers discussed best practices for investigating war crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice quickly.
On this occasion, they received the President of the EU Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust), Ladislav Hamran. The Agency is closely involved in the investigation of war crimes in Ukraine, including through the coordination of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on war crimes. Eurojust is also expected to take on a greater role in the investigation of Russia’s crime of aggression in Ukraine, pending an international decision to establish a special tribunal (see other news).
Ladislav Hamran spoke to EUROPE about the challenges Eurojust faces in prosecuting war crimes and its future tasks in supporting investigations into Russia’s crime of aggression in Ukraine. (Interview by Léa Marchal)
EUROPE: What are the current challenges faced by Joint Investigation Teams (JITs) to collect evidence on war crimes?
Ladislav Hamran: At present, the biggest challenge is obviously access to the territory. The war is ongoing and prosecutors are facing real risks, which is the biggest challenge. The second challenge is related to the massive scale of the invasion. So on a daily basis you have attacks against civilian infrastructures or civilians on different territories. And of course this is also related to the capacity which is available to go there and to start documenting and collecting evidence.
Other challenges are related to equipment, as prosecutors need technical equipment capable of documenting evidence: video cameras to document audio-visual evidence, drones to collect aerial evidence to demonstrate the scale of demolition or the scale of an attack. And all this is special equipment that also requires training. Let’s be honest, when we were studying, no one was teaching us how to document and collect all this.
Once the evidence has been collected, what are the challenges?
We have many actors investigating core international crimes. In total, Eurojust is aware of 21 national investigations, 14 of which are led by European Union countries. At the international level, we need to know who is investigating what, who has collected what, what evidence is available, where, in what jurisdiction.
And this is where Eurojust comes in, because we are responsible and mandated to coordinate these international efforts. And this is done through several means. First of all, through the Joint Investigation Teams (JITs) that we support (see EUROPE 12920/3).
Secondly, we are also working on the establishment the so called core international crime evidence database in which we will centrally store all the war crime evidence which was collected abroad (see EUROPE 12959/3).
The JIT has six members, including Ukraine; however, 14 EU countries have launched investigations into war crimes in Ukraine. Do you think it is a problem that some of them are not part of the JIT?
The more countries investigate the better to address the accountability for core international crimes. However, there is no requirement for countries to join the JIT. They can also carry out their own investigations on certain elements without joining the JIT and we still coordinate these national investigations through Eurojust.
As for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine, which is currently being debated in the EU, what is the role of Eurojust in the operational mechanism mentioned by European Commissioner Didier Reynders for gathering evidence?
Eurojust cannot actively investigate or host an interim prosecution office, because such an office has not been established. However, we can support the investigations and evidence collection of those countries that are investigating the crime of aggression.
There are currently four national investigations into the crime of aggression in the EU, plus the one in Ukraine, and we believe that we can provide further support to these countries within our mandate, which is the coordination, support of international efforts.
We will therefore host a new structure within the JIT, which we call for now the “International Coordination Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression”.
Countries with their own investigations into the crime of aggression will be invited to second their own prosecutors and they will jointly analyse the evidence gathered, start preparing the file for the crime of aggression.
What we, as Eurojust, will do is analytical, financial, ICT support, expertise, but the real evidence gathering must be done by the national authorities at this stage.
We want to step up the collection, the sharing, the analysis of evidence, we want to put together all the national authorities to make sure that we start building a case on this crime and that is, in my opinion, a very practical and relatively achievable development.
How fast can this centre be established?
It is a matter of weeks. We have to discuss a few elements with the partners, but I expect it can be achieved in a short amount of time.