THE HAGUE: The prosecutor for the world’s only permanent war crimes court on Thursday called for an inquiry to be opened into alleged abuses during a swift but brutal 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia.

If the surprise request from prosecutor Fatou Bensouda is accepted, it would be the first such investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) outside of Africa.

“On the basis of the information available, prosecutor Bensouda has concluded that there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes within the jurisdiction of the court have been committed in Georgia in the context of the armed conflict of August 2008,” the ICC said in a statement.

The brief five-day war erupted when the two neighbours clashed over the Russian-backed breakaway territory of South Ossetia.

On the night of August 7-8, 2008, Georgia’s then Western-backed president Mikheil Saakashvili launched an offensive to reclaim South Ossetia only to see Russian forces sweep into Georgia.

Several hundred people are said to have died, and some 120,000 were displaced in the brief fighting, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Bensouda “will shortly submit a request to the pre-trial chamber for authorisation to open an investigation,” the ICC said in a statement.

The move comes at a time of increasing tensions between the West and Russia.

Ties with Moscow have plunged since the start of the conflict in Ukraine last year, and Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Relations have deteriorated further in recent days amid Russian air strikes in Syria, which Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Thursday were a “troubling escalation” of Moscow’s military activities.

After winning the 2008 war, Russia officially recognised South Ossetia — along with another breakaway Georgian region Abkhazia — as independent states.

Published in Dawn October 9th, 2015

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