President Cyril Ramaphosa has filed a confidential affidavit responding to the DA’s court case asking the court to declare that SA has a duty to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he comes to SA to attend the Brics summit in August.
The affidavit was expected to shed light on the government's position on its legal duty under the Rome Statute, which has been domesticated into SA law. The DA says the law is unequivocal that SA must arrest and surrender the Russian president should he set foot in the country, following a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March.
Court papers are usually public documents. But in answer to questions from TimesLIVE Premium, the presidency said the government was “obliged in terms of international law to keep the interactions with the ICC on the warrant of arrest against President Putin confidential”.
Asked directly whether the ICC had issued a request to SA for the arrest and surrender of Putin, the Presidency said: “The ICC requires the fact of the request for co-operation to be kept confidential. To date there has been no relaxation of the requirement of confidentiality by the ICC.”
The presidency quoted article 87(3) of the Rome Statute, which says: “The requested state shall keep confidential a request for co-operation and any documents supporting the request, except to the extent that the disclosure is necessary for execution of the request.”
The ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin alleges that he is reasonably believed to bear individual criminal responsibility for the unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
In the DA’s founding affidavit, party leader John Steenhuisen said once the ICC had issued a warrant, the obligation to arrest arises “immediately” — once the ICC sends SA a request for arrest and surrender.
“Having issued a warrant, the request to arrest and surrender is, in the circumstances of this case, a mere formality — if the ICC believes President Putin will be in SA, it will issue a request for SA to arrest him and surrender him to the ICC for prosecution.”
Steenhuisen said the DA expected the ICC had already issued the request. “The government is called on to advise this court as to whether it has received a request from the ICC,” he said.
Speaking to TimesLIVE Premium, Steenhuisen said the DA was consulting its legal team about the confidentiality of the president’s affidavit and would comment once it had done so.
On Wednesday the president’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, briefed the media in an update on Ramaphosa’s programme. In response to questions about Putin’s attendance at the summit, he said the president was consulting his Brics counterparts and would thereafter make an announcement.
When asked what options were being discussed, he said things were at a stage “beyond options”. But when pressed on whether this implied that a decision had been reached, Magwenya repeated that the president was consulting and would make an announcement soon.
TimesLIVE
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