It Could Happen Here - Vladimir Putin has a Warrant for His Arrest. Does it Matter?

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Robert sits down with Nick Waters, a war crimes analyst, researcher and charming fellow, to talk about the International Criminal Court and Vladdy Puts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about world stuff falling apart,

putting it back together, all that good stuff. Today, we're actually covering something that's at the intersection of all of that, both how fucked up things are and the attempt to make them more just, more equitable, less nightmarish. We're talking about war crimes, the International Criminal Court, and most specifically, the warrant that was just issued for Vladimir Putin's arrest, which is something you've probably heard about on the internet. People have various takes on this in order to kind of talk about what's actually been done, what it actually means, and sort of the history of attempts to hold the leaders of nations to account for war crimes. I want to talk to Nick Waters. Nick, welcome to the show.

Hi, Rob. Nick, you and I have some connections outside of this. First off, you're here on the show today because you work in an investigatory, investigative capacity. Geez, can you tell that I'm not used to waking up this early? For Bellingcat, where we both work together, your focus has been primarily on war crimes. You've been covering Ukraine lately, but you have a pretty wide purview and a pretty wide base of experience, um, including crimes in Libya. Um, and yeah, I, I wanted to talk to you a little bit.

First off, welcome to the show. Thanks very much, mate. Um, in honor of, uh, behind the bastards, I have the largest knife I could find in this place next to me. Uh, it's not quite machete, but I, yeah, I mean, I thought I should have one just in case. That's good. I've got, well, yeah, I actually am more or less knifeless here.

I do have a nine millimeter in the desk, but somewhat more limited span of uses. Now, Nick, you and I have shared one of the strongest bonds that two men can share, which is eating some really delicious arepas. But we also share an interest in the somewhat difficult history of attempts from our species to kind of grapple with the nature of war crimes, of acts of genocide, and hold people to account for them. I kind of think before we get into what's happened with Putin, we should talk about what the ICC is and what its history comes from. Because it actually dates back a little over 100 years, attempts to make the ICC. was the first convention in which a number of European nations were like, boy, we should really have some sort of court put together to attempt to hold leaders and individuals to account for committing war crimes. Yeah.

I'm not that familiar with the kind of the very long history of attempts at international justice. Suffice to say that so far it hasn't worked out quite how i think everyone expects it to that is the tldr international justice good idea hasn't happened yet um pretty much yeah i mean there's been lots of yeah lots of agreements uh obviously kind of everyone knows geneva convention etc um lots of other agreements about how not to kill people in the most horrific ways possible in war and you know as part

of that like Rome Statute which created the ICC was agreed in 1998 so yeah there's been kind of like 100 years or so of efforts before the ICC actually got here. I should probably also I need to say,

before we kind of get going on anything, I'm not a lawyer, which is super important because I know all the lawyers out there will be angry about it. So, Nick, I want to talk about what, in particular, this decision means. Because there's been, like, obviously, I think it's fair to say in the immediate term

probably nothing like it's not like uh the international um uh uh warrant agents are going to come out and arrest vladimir in uh in the kremlin or in his his mansion that you see fake photoshopped images of on on twitter all the time um but yeah yeah uh yeah so in kind of like day-to-day stuff yeah it doesn't have that much of an effect um so russia doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the icc so it's not like you know the fsb are going to storm into the kremlin and arrest putin and like export him to the hague in a you know diplomatic bag or something that's that's not going to happen um but in other ways it's it's a big deal in other ways um and also it's a for me like really the biggest uh thing about this is that it's an indicator about how

seriously the ICC is taking taking this war. International justice moves so slowly. You know, we're talking like, you know, measured in decades. So to have an arrest warrant out in one year is like a really big deal for the ICC at least, yeah. And this is because, if I'm not mistaken, both Putin and the woman, because he's not the only one, by the way, that's been charged by the ICC. There's also, I'm going to attempt to get her name

right, Maria Lvova Belova, who is the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia. And part of the reason why this has happened so rapidly is that both Putin and Maria have made pretty unequivocal statements about the removal of Ukrainian children from their families, forced deportation into Russia and adoption by Russian families, which is that is a war crime, that is an act of genocide. Yeah, so i think the actual crime is unlawful deportation or the actual citation is unlawful deportation of ukrainian children uh which yes could be arguably and again at this point emphasize not a lawyer yeah yeah i think can feed into the kind of accusations of genocide um and so it's a pretty big charge to to level against uh putin and this uh this

commissioner um this early on i i think it's also like one of the easier ones as well like in the view of the russian states this is a you know wonderful thing they're doing they are essentially kind of rescuing these children from uh and you can't see it but i'm doing air quotes right now like ukrainian nazis yeah educating them and bring them up as as russian children um and you can't see it, but I'm doing air quotes right now, like Ukrainian Nazis, educating them and bringing them up as Russian children. And, you know, they're taking these children away from their culture, their families, and their country to basically erase who they are, which, yeah, plays quite a big part in the accusation that this could be part of an act of genocide, yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting to me. Lvova Belova has kind of described this, like her justification of this, and I think the Russian state's justification of this is both that, yeah, the Ukrainians are Nazis, and also I've heard claims from her that like, well, we're removing children from a dangerous war zone, which, you know, that begs the question, why is it a dangerous war zone right now, among other things. But one of the things that's interesting to me is that Lvov Obolova is not just

part of the state apparatus of carrying out this act, but has also thanked Putin publicly for making it possible for her to adopt a child from Donbass, which is one of the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. So yeah, it is kind of the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. So yeah, it is kind of interesting, the stuff that had to fall into place for this to be able to happen in such an expeditious manner. Yeah, I think it helps that they view, or the Russian state views, this act as something that is beneficial. And so they want to say, hey, look, we're rescuing these children. beneficial uh and so they want to say hey look we're rescuing these children and you can see kind of similar you've seen similar vibes with like uh uh basically stealing ukrainian uh cultural

heritage uh from uh like museums and stuff like that they or the russian state believes you know that they are doing the right thing like we are very proud that we have taken these um objects away and we are saving them again from ukrainian nazis um and so they like make public pronouncements about it they say yeah we're doing the thing it's awesome isn't it yeah um and so the result is quite a lot of evidence that they're doing these pretty bad things um and so yeah there's there's quite a lot of evidence there there are statements from uh this commissioner for children from Putin. It's pretty clear what's happening. So it's quite a I think it's quite an interesting charge to bring. recorded about 16,000 cases of forcible deportations of children. That's not like a final number, just like the death tallies and whatnot are not final numbers. But that is the Ukrainian state's estimate of how many kids have been taken away, which is a, I mean, that's a pretty staggering

number. I mean, yeah, that's a huge number of children. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an absolutely huge number of children. And then you have to account, you know, that it's not just the children that are the victims here, it's also their families who are the victims. So we're talking about like a knock on effect with, you know, tens of thousands of people who've been affected by these acts, if not more than that. probably higher than the tens of thousands in terms of family members and whatnot who are impacted by this. In terms of what technically this means for Putin, there's about, I think, 120 signatory nations to the Rome Statute. And within those countries, theoretically, if Putin or if Maria were to travel there, they would theoretically be arrested if they were to set foot in one of those signatory nations. Yeah. So theoretically, theoretically, doing a lot of walking there. Yeah. Doing a lot of heavy lifting. Okay. So yeah, in theory, if Putin travels to any of these nations, he should be arrested. But some of the nations

don't recognize or believe that heads of state uh are basically immune and i imagine there'll be several of those signatories who will likely refuse to extradite putin should mr putin visit them and this has actually happened before uh so uh i think it was south africa uh refused to extradite uh a former head of state. I think it was the leader of South Sudan, but I can't remember. Yeah, wasn't it Omar Bashir? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I believe it was Omar Bashir.

Yeah, so he managed to travel around and was not arrested and extradited, as theoretically should have been. However, it still gives mr putin and especially security detail some headaches um because they're still going to have to check with these states when they go and visit you know hey are you going to like arrest him yeah which is not like a call you usually have to ask and then if they were planning to arrest him uh you know they might not tell them that they're planning to arrest them so there's always going to be or at the moment there's still like a

cost applied to mr putin in terms of traveling to these countries that would still you know might still like uh consider the ic jurisdiction over heads of state to be lacking um yeah yeah so it's still there's still like some cost applied there Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows presented by

iHeart and Sonora an anthology of modern day horror stories Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry

veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star and host of the podcast makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star and host of the podcast, I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because I'm on the other

side of it. And the only way to get to the other side of something is to go through it, other side of something is to go through it, not around it. Allow your body to feel the pain. And then you have to dig in sometimes and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If I'm remembering correctly, there have been three sitting heads of state that have faced ICC charges in office. We talked about Omar Bashir, Muammar Gaddafi, and now Putin is number three. Which is, if we're looking at the history of the last, I mean, just since the establishment of the ICC, fewer than the number of world leaders who

have been involved, allegedly, in crimes against humanity, I think fair to say. Which brings us to the question of like, what does it mean to be a signatory to Rome, to the ICC? What does it mean to actually be bound by any of these rules? Because both Russia and the United States, I was looking at a map earlier that kind of lists out every country's relationship to the ICC and both Russia and the United States are in the position of like having endorsed aspects of the ICC and then not signed on, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, not a lawyer, not that familiar with how the ICC works in practice. But basically, if you sign up to the icc you have to uh agree to enforce their judgments you know including arrest warrants uh which again is

something like the us and uh us and russia haven't done uh the idea that basically the icc marks itself as marks itself basically thinks of itself as a court of last resort uh so you know they're not going to be out there prosecuting individual soldiers, or very unlikely to be prosecuting, like, individual soldiers who've, like, say, executed, like, 10 prisoners of war in a ditch. That's something that is unlikely that the ICC is going to prosecute.

They are going for, you know, high-end commanders, people who've carried out, like, extremely severe acts. Yeah. And especially in cases where like a state is not able to carry out such prosecution uh so uh for example uh take the uk um so uk uh has in theory uh conducted investigations investigations into allegations of war crimes in Iraq conducted by its troops. That was IHAT, so the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. It was pretty shambolic. It was extremely shambolic. It was a really bad investigation, not just for the victims, who basically no one really ever got justice from it yeah very very

few people ever got justice from it but also the people who are actually accused uh were sometimes like investigated multiple multiple times um but because the uk made some kind of effort to investigate it even if it was absolutely shambolic um it's unlikely that the icc is ever actually going to investigate uk soldiers for war crimes in Iraq, because in theory, that should be the UK carrying out that investigation. And in theory, they have carried out that investigation. It's completely inadequate. But yeah, that's the justification.

That's incredibly interesting to me, because it does seem like, on one hand, I can see the logic, and this is part of why the United States, my country's justification for why we are not a signatory, is that the Constitution does not allow us to agree to have our citizens tried for crimes that they are being tried for in the United States by an international court, something along those lines. And I can understand the idea that like, well, national sovereignty, like the only way we're going to get anyone to agree to let this thing exist and abide by any aspect of its rulings is if it does not overly interfere with their national sovereignty, including their ability to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes. On the other hand, the state of affairs, as you've just related, the state of affairs is inadequate, right?

Like that is – the system that has been developed is not adequate to trying or achieving justice in a case like the Iraq War in which there were a lot of crimes committed that people have not been punished for. And I mean, obviously, you have to kind of marry that to the fact that the attempt to do something at all in this way is extremely new. As we've said, we have most of the people who work on my show are older than the ICC. And so that's still an achievement. I don't know. show are older than the ICC. And so that's still an achievement. I don't know. I'm wondering kind of like what you see is like the positive future for attempts to hold individuals and nations to account here. Like is it continuing to grind like this or do you see kind of a more positive opening coming forward as a result of particularly the attention that all of these war crimes in Ukraine have gotten? I mean, I think it will continue to grind.

When you look at the history of atrocities that have taken place in conflict over the last, you know, like 20 years, it's just absolutely huge. Yeah. You know, there's like atrocity upon atrocity upon atrocity, and the ICC can only investigate a tiny number of those. The reality is that only a tiny fraction of those atrocities will ever actually be investigated and victims face justice. That is the reality of the situation. The ICC does, you know, carry out investigations and does carry out prosecutions. But again, we're talking like the most grave

crimes possible. And usually, you know, really senior people who often are able to evade those kind of prosecutions i think there's a better chance of uh some kind of justice at like a national level with uh universal jurisdiction um so recently uh universal jurisdiction was used in germany uh to prosecute two uh two Syrian officers who basically carried out torture against Syrians during the revolution. And those two Syrian officers basically fled to Germany and were later prosecuted there. And so it's not just the ICC, it's also universal jurisdiction, it is, you know, tribunals, there's other stuff there. But again, like this is only a tiny fraction of

everything that gets investigated. I've been reading, I'm going through several different books about Joseph Mengele most recently, and including some accounts from, you know, Jewish doctors who were enslaved and who were forced to work at Auschwitz. And I've been thinking a lot about the, the Nate, like the different kinds of war crimes, right? You have a group of Australian or US or British soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who commit a massacre, kill a number of civilians, and that is a war crime that is the result of individuals taking individual actions, right? As opposed to the actions of a state and the actions that are a result of years worth of directed cultural efforts, which I think is part a way to look at what the Russian state's attitude towards Ukrainians are and a lot of the crimes that have been committed over there the denial of the existence of ukrainians as a people is deeper

and more complex than the kind of crime that a soldier might commit in a moment of passion and and fundamentally different from that and it's one of those things if you if like for example to go back to mengala if you're trying to judge Mengele for his crimes, you have to judge the entire German medical establishment, which joined the Nazi party in higher numbers than any other group in the country, and which was directly implicated in how Auschwitz functioned and why it worked the way it did. And there's realistically, like most of the doctors, Mengele, there were attempts to punish him. Obviously, he escaped. But the doctors who educated him, who taught him, who inculcated him in the attitudes that were directly responsible for the crimes that he

committed were never punished. And legally, I don't know how you would punish people for that. How do you punish someone for promulgating ideas like the ideas that Ukrainians are not a people, which leads to a lot of the violence that you're seeing over there? Like, how do you, like, there's not realistically, and at least in my understanding of the law, a way to punish that, but it is a factor in these crimes. Yeah, the creation of a culture absolutely is. And a key, like a really good example of this is the radio station Rwanda. Yes. Who, you know, broadcast basically what were effectively caused to genocide. And I think they were actually ended up being prosecuted by the ICC.

I think actually as well. I believe, yeah, I believe there were at least attempts. Yeah. The international criminal tribunal for Rwanda. Yeah. I mean,

it's one thing when you're talking about like direct incitements to violence. It's another, when you're talking about like kind of the stuff that Dugan is responsible for, which is absolutely a factor. The kind of ID, the idea is that he is one of the people who is kind of promulgated under the direction of Putin and others in the Russian state are like a factor in the behavior that we've seen over there, but it also is, is harder to kind of qualify it as a direct call for war crimes in some cases, although some of the stuff Dugan has said, I think you could, you could argue is certainly like a direct call to violence.

Yeah. I mean like, yeah, well it's really difficult to kind of get that to raise that to the threshold of prosecution. It's really difficult thing to do, especially if you are external to the culture that is or to the organization that is creating that internal culture and i'm yeah like very

familiar with this kind of stuff having uh for for those of you of your listeners who might not be familiar i was a army officer so like quite a big part of my job was making sure that like, uh, the culture within my platoon was, uh, a beneficial good culture, um, in which the blokes would knock off and like murder people. Um, and you read about stories like my lie or there's a really good example for this book called black hearts, this American Pluton in Iraq. Yeah. And it's really clear where basically institutional culture has completely failed or has created a culture in which basically committing atrocities or murder

is either, you know, mildly ignored or actively encouraged. And yeah, that culture is something that is really difficult to police because it really has to come from within the institution itself. You know, unless you just completely destroy the institution itself, which is also another option, which is what the Canadians did with the airborne regiment after some of their guys in Somalia, like roasted some poor guy alive on a fire. Jesus. The Canadians basically just disbanded the entire airborne regiment.

They basically said, like, the culture in this regiment is not, it's too far gone, basically. We're going to disband this entire regiment, which is what they did, so you can do that too. But it's quite a difficult thing to do. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, Whenever you get your podcast. underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to god things can

change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star and host of the podcast, I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because

I'm on the other side of it. And the only way to get to the other side of something is to go through it, not around it. Allow your body to feel the pain. And then you have to dig in sometimes

and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. kind of the last thing i wanted to go over is the uh the most recent the response of the russian state to these warrants um one of them has been they've announced that they are in carrying out an investigation into the ICC, which, um, is, is, you know, um, I I'm sure

as meaningful as, uh, uh, the sentence I just said. And, um, I, the other thing that they've done is sort of threaten, uh, to launch a hypersonic warhead at the Hague, which I mean, like, it's not, he does have a lot of missiles. So it's, you can't like completely disregard a threat from a nuclear armed nation to launch missiles at the Hague. But it's also just, you know, threats like these are not completely, and in fact, there's a provision in, what is it called? Let me double check on the name here. I'm so bad at remembering the names of laws. The American Service Members Protection Act that does theoretically allow the use of military force by the US if American citizens are extradited. This is like a much cruder version of that. Like if you arrest us, we'll nuke the egg. But it does like it's one of those things we're laughing about it.

But if you were to go back 10 years and imagine that threat being leveled, like even by Putin, it would seem like farcical. I guess it is farcical, but we're here. Yeah, it's completely insane isn't it yeah i i i mean like how do you respond to that like right like what do you say like i'm gonna i'm gonna hypersonic the hay yeah the hay response no uh it's just like i know know, it's mad. Like, when, if you go to the Hague, or like the ICC,

you know, you'll have like the security guards sat there with their little kind of nine-mil pistol and they kind of buzz you through that kind of stuff.

And like, the idea of them kind of, you know, trying to fight off like a Delta Force assault on the ICC in the case where like an American soldier is like,

oh, it's farcicalical but then the idea that they could do anything because like a hypersonic missile is like 30 seconds away from like obliterating the entirety of the ICC you gotta really you gotta really lead the missile I mean the only kind of benefit I suppose is that like the icc is on the outskirts of the hague yeah so they would irradiate uh actually quite a bit of a residential area and then a lot of sand dunes yeah yeah yeah i mean one of the upsides is that if russia does nuke the hague we will have deeper concerns than what to do about international criminal law in the wake of that, including taking sufficient iodine pills, which I'm not by, I mean, people, everyone gets is antsy about enough today. I don't think this is like a realistic threat. I don't think it's likely

that the Russian state is going to nuke the ICC. Unfortunately, part of why it's unlikely is that it's unlikely that Putin is going to face direct justice for his actions unless he is somehow overthrown, right? Like that is realistically the only case by which he winds up in front of the ICC is if he is forced out of power. Yeah. I mean, like when I, when this, you know, news first broke, there were some people who saying, Hey, is this a big deal at all? Like we'll never, you know, Peter will never see justice and like yeah he might he probably won't but on the off chance it's always good to have that there uh you know i went slobber down nosovich uh you know stepped down as president what is president of serbia uh you know there was i think

there was a law which meant that he couldn't actually be extradited to the icc so everyone said the same thing you know he's never going to face justice. And then he ended up at the ICC. Yeah. And if there is some kind of a coup or something, you know, not now, maybe in the year's time,

two years time, 15 years time, you know, Putin is a very valuable bargaining chip. Yeah. And being able to send him to the hague uh would be an extremely powerful message of uh hey guys we're entering a new era like russia the russian state doesn't want to be associated with what happened under putin's rule uh here you go have mr putin put him on trial uh and you know he becomes like quite an important bargaining chip. And so, yeah,

the chance of it happening is like pretty small, but it's still there. It's still worth doing this. And that's, I think, where I land is I've just been, again, reading about in this winter of 1944, there was a rebellion in Auschwitz by a number of members of the Sonderkommando, which was a group of prisoners who were tasked with the actual job of making the camp function. And these guys rebelled. They blew up a bunch of stuff. And the whole attempt, this whole attack that cost hundreds of them their lives was in the hope that one of them would get out and tell the story of what had been happening inside.

And when you think about it that way, what historically, and not just going back to the Holocaust, but the entire long history of human war crimes, which go back as far as war, the desire of victims to have someone be aware of what has happened to them, I think makes this a positive move. In the middle of an incredibly dark chapter in human history and an incredibly awful war. The fact that this is happening at all as flawed, as imperfect as the whole – and it's – people keep bringing up things like the inequities of the prosecution of the United States and Israel for a number of different acts of their States and militaries. But like, even given all that, the fact that this is happening at all is,

um, I think meaningful. I do think it matters. I, it is definitely meaningful. Like it's very much like a statement of intent from the ICC and especially from the new prosecutor, the ICC cream con who came in last year.

Uh, and he's kind of like, as far as I can tell, come in and shaken a few cages. And it's a very clear statement of intent from both himself and from the court as well. Yeah. Well, I think that's as good a note as any to end on. Nick, do you want to direct anybody towards a place they can donate or something they can or a place they can go to read up more on this or other issues of international criminal justice? I mean, yeah, I'd direct people to Bellingcat.com, which is who I work for. My Twitter is n__waters89. I don't really go on Twitter that much anymore.

Oh, really? Did something happen there? I don't know, mate. Yeah, but I post there occasionally every so often. how much anymore oh really something happened there I don't know mate uh uh yeah but I post there occasionally every so often uh but yeah

bellingcat.com would be where I'd recommend um that's where like our work is anyway yeah well

Nick Waters thank you so much for coming on uh for lending your expertise here uh that's gonna do it for us here it could happen here uh sorry for using your expertise here. That's going to do it for us here at It Could Happen Here. Sorry for using the word here so many times.

Have a lovely day, everybody. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Wrath. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.