 We're going to talk to Ambassador Shaffer about the question, how should the international community address war crimes in Ukraine and beyond? Before we get to that, we have a quick video from Wasim Mukdad, a Syrian musician and torture survivor. He was tortured by officials in the Syrian regime who will share his experiences with us now. In the time of war or conflict, in the time of pain and death, I believe music and culture gains a unique place, because there is the expression part of it, but there is also the communication part of it. And by communication, there is the musicians with each other, the musicians with the audience, and the musicians with the history. Wasim Mukdad is a musician and doctor from Syria. He was an activist. He escaped the regime where he was captured and tortured, made his way to Germany where he's having a fine career as an wood player musician. And he was also an important witness in a case against the man who tortured him in one of the rare instances of post-conflict justice. This guy was sentenced to life in prison, and he was caught in Germany. He's in jail now. And so Wasim's testimony was an important part of that case. And he's known all over the world for that. His picture was in newspapers everywhere. I understand war as a human activity. A human activity to achieve superiority against others. Culture in general and music in particular is a cooperation activity. So it's, in my sense of view, or point of view, it's exactly the opposite of what conflict and war has to offer. So it's an act of resistance but in a very delicate way. Music for me is a way to heal those scars. Music for me is a way to share those painful memories. Music for me is a way to laugh at my pain. To laugh in the face of my pain. Because I need to live with it. Those memories are there. Ambassador Sheffer, thank you for joining us. As you know, Danny Rothenberg and Alex Stark have pressing personal issues, and so we're not able to be part of this panel. And I just wanted to tell the audience that if you have a question for a professor, Ambassador Sheffer, there's a question mark on the upper right hand part of your screen where you can submit questions. So the first question I had, sir, is what atrocity crimes have been committed in Ukraine? Well, one could credibly argue that four baskets of crimes, in fact, have been committed. Traucity crimes comprise of war crimes, which we're familiar with, of military to military crimes, but that violate the laws of war and the proper conduct on the battlefield. But of course, war crimes can also include military assaults on civilians and assaults on prisoners of war, et cetera. Then there's crimes against humanity, which is a very widespread assault on a civilian population. It can take place in war. It can also take place in peacetime when there is no armed conflict, but a government decides to actually assault part of its own population in a widespread, very injurious assault that can result in death, destruction of property, et cetera. We've seen all of that take place in Ukraine. Then there is the crime of aggression, which is actually the initial crime that occurred, and that's the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military. That was a massive crime that commenced on February 24th of 2022, but there's also the argument that, frankly, the crime of aggression commenced in 2014 when Russian forces and disguised uniforms actually invaded Crimea, and ultimately, Crimea was purportedly annexed by Russia. So I think the argument for aggression can reach back to 2014. And then finally, there's genocide. And while people may think, isn't that just too large a crime with too much specific intent to destroy all or part of a particular protected group, such as the National Group of Ukrainians, has that red line actually been crossed in Ukraine? And many of us argue that there are aspects of genocide that have been crossed, particularly the incitement to genocide. That's a component part of the crime of genocide. And that will play out in coming months as the entire conflict is analyzed, but we should not take genocide off of the table either. So there are four baskets of crimes. You know, during Nuremberg, the crime of aggression was also part of the charge sheet as well as genocide. Is that correct? Well, yes, at Nuremberg, aggression, which was called crimes against peace at Nuremberg, was actually considered by prosecutor Robert Jackson, the US prosecutor at Nuremberg, to be the primary crime that would be prosecuted at Nuremberg. And yet, by the end of Nuremberg, the Nuremberg statute didn't have the crime of genocide at that time because it didn't technically exist until the genocide convention a couple of years later. But it was clearly part of crimes against humanity, a widespread assault on a civilian population. And that actually seized more attention at Nuremberg with the Holocaust being brought front and center in the courtroom. And while aggression was successfully prosecuted and Nazi officials were convicted on it, it was crimes against humanity which seized so much attention. So the International Criminal Court, my understanding is Ukraine is not a member of the ICC. And does that complicate things that, of course, the US has been very resistant to the ICC? Yeah, Ukraine has not actually a member state of the International Criminal Court. And there are all sorts of domestic reasons why that never occurred. It did exercise a right under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It's called Article 12, Subparagraph 3, in which a non-party state can actually request the court to seize jurisdiction over a particular situation of crimes. And the government concedes the investigative powers to the ICC, which would investigate all parties to the conflict, including the Ukrainians themselves. But Ukraine conceded that to the ICC in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea, reaffirmed it, and certainly reaffirmed it for this invasion of February of 2024. So they have had the jurisdiction of the ICC investigating crimes on their territory that fall within the Russian mandate with Ukraine since 2014. The United States is not a party to the court. I had the honor of signing the statute, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, on behalf of President Clinton on December 31st of 2000. But subsequent to the Clinton administration, the George W. Bush administration decided to withdraw from that signature, even though it still technically is on the document. And we've gone through various phases of engagement with the ICC and support for the ICC from the sidelines. Typically under Republican administrations, it's been in opposition to the court under Democratic administrations. It's had a cooperative engaging relationship with the ICC, and that includes the Biden administration. The ICC investigator, Cameron Kahn, Karim Kahn, he is, I mean, he's on the ground investigating in Ukraine. And what is he doing? Well, he's been on the ground two or three times himself. And of course, he has his ICC teams of investigators on the ground. The ICC has committed a substantial amount of resources, staff expertise to the Ukraine situation. I think it's for the audience, it's important to note that never before in any conflict or situation of internal atrocities has there been so much investigative effort in such a short period of time on the investigation and prosecution of atrocity crimes as there is in Ukraine. This is truly an unprecedented, heavy hit on investigation. And there are teams not only from the ICC, but also from the European Union, from the United States. In fact, Arizona State University, under the leadership of Professor Clint Williamson, one of my successors as ambassador at large for work crimes issues, has been on the ground for months now, undertaking investigations in Ukraine. So ASU can take very considerable pride in that. And of course, the Ukrainians themselves are the prosecutor general's office is deeply involved with investigative efforts on the ground. It's interesting to note, Peter, that we've seen in the news, of course, the sudden Russian to Russian held territory of particularly in the north part near Kharkiv. Immediately after the Ukrainian seized that territory within the last few days. So our crimes investigators, particularly of the Ukrainian government have rushed in to investigate crimes on the ground in a very real time basis because of course those crimes would be associated with the Russian military which would have just left so it's a prime time to actually conduct those investigations. Will there be special courts that will need to be built. I mean, I think when Saddam Hussein was tried. Yeah, there was a special court system. Go ahead. Yes, exactly. I mean, that's because there was no international court that had jurisdiction over Iraq during that period of time. And also the Iraqi national courts were not particularly equipped for the prosecution of atrocity crimes so a special Iraqi tribunal was created. But that was a national Iraqi court that was created for that purpose with some international assistance. In this case, there will be quite a collection of courts that will be seized with Ukrainian prosecutions first and foremost of course is the permanent international criminal court under prosecutor green Khan. But remember that's the ICC is very much a top leadership prosecution court. There will not be that many defendants. They will go to the top, generally speaking, to find their the perpetrators who they want to actually prosecute. You want to look to other courts such as national courts the Ukrainian courts themselves will for years in the future be prosecuting the more mid level and low level individuals for whom they can gain custody. But then other national courts such as in Germany and other parts of Europe can exercise what we call universal jurisdiction to actually prosecute this is exactly what you saw in the clip before our session in Syria. German courts were exercising universal jurisdiction to prosecute a Syrian official why because the Syrian official was found on their territory on German territory so they could get custody. Once they got custody than they exercise universal jurisdiction. This means that Russians in particular who are involved with this conflict will probably be very smart not to travel around anywhere because they will be subject to apprehension and then prosecution. The final thing I want to just say on this Peter is that for the crime of aggression which is really the massive crime that occurred here in the invasion of Ukraine and all the other crimes are sort of subunits of this large crime of aggression. The ICC does not have jurisdiction over that crime for very technical reasons which I don't need to go into here but the point is, you will not see that crime prosecuted by the ICC. So, many of my colleagues and I have been involved in developing a concept for the creation of a special tribunal on aggression that in our case, in the model that we're developing would involve a treaty between the UN General Assembly and the government of Ukraine. Just like we did for Sierra Leone for the special court for Sierra Leone for the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia. Those were treaty courts between the UN and the respective government. That would be the model here and we've had lots of discussions about this and at some point that the crime of aggression must be on deck. Is there any chance that Putin or other sort of leaders will actually see the inside of a courtroom? You know, it's very problematic that we'll actually see Putin and the senior Russian leadership, military and political involved with this war and the cross-street crimes actually be seized into custody, you know, be arrested and brought into a courtroom, whether it be in the Hague, in Kiev, in Berlin, wherever. Why? Because, frankly, they will be indicted. I mean, they will have indictments hanging over them. I'm certain that's going to happen. Vladimir Putin will more than likely be indicted by the International Criminal Court. I just say that is a matter of objective analysis that will probably happen. But they will have to remain in Russia to avoid apprehension. They will not be able to travel, but they will be ostracized internationally. But you never know that the Ukrainian courts, for example, do have the right to prosecute in absentia so they could follow through with trials in Ukraine and actually reach convictions of these individuals who remain protected by their presence on Russian territory. Would that subject them to an interpol red notice or something like that? Yeah, if they step off Russian territory, that's what would happen. It would be a red notice and any government would be entitled then to take them down. I suppose their scope of travel might be limited to Iran, Belarus, North Korea and the People's Republic of China. I doubt any four of those governments would actually honor such a red notice. Talking about the crime of aggression, how does the US invasion of Iraq sort of figure in all this? You know, there's hypocrisy that swings back and forth on these issues, as you know, Peter, and the invasion of Iraq did not have Security Council authorization. And the best argument that could possibly be made, but it's a very shallow one, is that somehow the United States and the United Kingdom, who joined us in that invasion, were exercising some kind of right of self-defense because they were seeking the nuclear weapons that they thought were there. Obviously a very shallow argument that proved to have no substance to it. And so the crime of aggression did not technically, it didn't have a forum back in 2000, what was that, 2003, because the International Criminal Court, although it did exist at that time, the crime of aggression was not operationalized until many years later, 2010. Through an amendment to the Rome Statute. So there was no, there was no actual forum that said, we prosecute the crime of aggression at that time. But theoretically, or as an academic, you could certainly make the argument that the United States and the United Kingdom really took a legal risk in entering Iraq under the reasons, or one might even say pretenses that they did. John Bolton has famously said that the happiest day of his life is when he pulled the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court, at that time he was at the State Department. So I think you alluded to this earlier, the U.S. views about the ICC have sort of waxed and waned over the years. Where is it now with this Ukraine war in its seven month, where are we now? Yeah, that happiest day for Mr. Bolton was when he thought he removed my signature from the Rome Statute. But a legal opinion from the legal counsel's office at the U.N. thereafter actually stated that no, it's still there, fully fine. And it just has an asterisk next to it saying that Bolton's letter had been filed with the United Nations. And I would hope someday that President Biden could simply put a second asterisk saying the letter is not filed by the U.S. Can you hear? Now, but in terms of your question, Peter, the Biden administration under, you know, the new U.S. ambassador large for work crimes issues is, is Beth Von Shock. And she has had a long history of academic work on the International Criminal Court and is of course now in a position of authority to communicate with the court to see that the United States can be of assistance as far as possible under U.S. Law. It's, it's very important to note that under the Ukraine invasion has sort of unlocked some of the doors of apprehension about the ICC in the United States. There was a Senate resolution adopted, I believe in April of 2022, which has the support of a large number of conservative Republican senators all heralding the intervention of the International Criminal Court to investigate the crimes on the ground and supporting that. And there's other legislation on the hill to further strengthen U.S. assistance in the sense of that that there would have a way of assisting in the investigations in Ukraine and certainly support. If only diplomatically, the work of the International Criminal Court. So all of the signals in light of the Ukraine invasion, Peter, have been quite positive with respect to the Biden administrations and Congress's relationship and commitment to the work of the International Criminal Court, at least with respect to Ukraine. I think we have to broaden our prism on that and understand that the ICC also is investigating many other situations of atrocities around the world. And of course, other countries and peoples that are subject to those atrocity crimes do deserve the attention of investigators with respect to those crimes as well. Thank you very much, Ambassador Sheffa, for really giving us a very enlightening tour to the horizon about this issue.