Russia’s top investigative body said on Monday it had opened a criminal case against the International Criminal Court prosecutor and judges who issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges, Reuters reports.
The move was a symbolic gesture of defiance, three days after the ICC accused Putin and his children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova of the war crime of deporting children from Ukraine to Russia.
The state Investigative Committee said there were no grounds for criminal liability on Putin’s part, and heads of state enjoyed absolute immunity under a 1973 U.N. convention.
The ICC prosecutor’s actions showed signs of being crimes under Russian law, the committee said, including knowingly accusing an innocent person of a crime.
The prosecutor and judges were also suspected of “preparing an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international…