Criminals, victims, and thousands of proofs. How the EU investigates Russian war crimes and which criminal episodes will be the first to go to court – President of Eurojust explained

Law enforcement agencies from 21 countries and the Joint Investigation Team are working to ensure that every Russian war criminal gets their due. Ladislav Hamran, President of Eurojust, spoke to NV about the behavior of victims and witnesses and the amount of evidence already collected.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Eurojust, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, has become one of the bodies that facilitate the investigation of Russian war crimes at the international level. In particular, the agency has launched the Core International Crimes Evidence Database (CICED). With the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Eurojust has also recently announced that a center was launched in The Hague to support efforts to collect evidence of the crime of aggression in Ukraine.

NV talked to Ladislav Hamran, the President of Eurojust, about how European countries are currently collecting evidence of Russia’s war crimes, what obstacles they face, and how long it may take to investigate cases.

The conversation took place at the United for Justice Conference.

— From the very beginning, Eurojust has been supporting international efforts to collect evidence on major international crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. What difficulties do international prosecutors face when collecting evidence?

— There are many obstacles. First, obviously, the key obstacle is access to the territory and the beginning of evidence collection. This is mainly a nationwide problem for Ukrainian prosecutors but also for the members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) [representatives of Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, and Romania, partnered by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and Eurojust] who were sent to Ukraine to help the country start collecting evidence related to the ongoing war. For example, the JIT members were advised not to come to Ukraine for the time being, as it is simply not unsafe.

We also face other challenges at the international level. For example, 21 countries are conducting their investigations [at the national level] and are now collecting evidence. And this means that we need to understand who is investigating what, on what legal basis, what has already been done so far, and how much evidence has been collected.

We also cooperate with the international community of non-governmental organizations and civil society. The big challenge is ensuring we don’t duplicate our efforts so that NGOs don’t interview witnesses or victims who are then interviewed again by law enforcement agencies. So we want to make sure that organizations bring all victims and witnesses directly to law enforcement agencies.

Another problem is that we feel that victims and witnesses, who are abroad, are reluctant to testify because their relatives are still in Ukraine. They are afraid it may have consequences for them personally. This is also related to trust in institutions. We understand that Ukrainians do not trust institutions or do not trust enough, and they would like to wait for a more peaceful time. Perhaps at a later stage, they will share their testimonies with us.

Another problem is the overload of digital evidence. We have so much evidence today that we need to ensure we have sufficient analytical capacity to analyze all the evidence collected and start preparing different files and classifying them by type of crime.

This is just a brief overview of the challenges we face.

— Do you have any statistics on how much evidence has been collected by countries conducting national investigations?

— We currently have a rough idea of how much evidence has been collected by the Joint Investigation Team. However, we do not yet have a clear picture of how much evidence has been collected in the 21 jurisdictions. That is why Eurojust is developing a central international database of crime evidence and encourages all countries, i.e., the 21 countries [conducting their investigations] and other countries, to send us their evidence, to have all evidence in one place. And if this database is fully functional, we will have a complete picture of what has been collected and how much. And then, we will filter it by the type of crime, region, etc. After that, we can start developing prosecution strategies.

— What evidence has been collected by the Joint Investigation Team?

— At this stage, at least we or the Joint Investigation Team and its members are focused on collecting evidence, in particular, to ensure that victims and witnesses who come to us are interviewed properly under the highest legal standards and that various digital evidence, such as videos, photos, etc., are analyzed and securely stored. This is the first stage. In the next step, we will explore all the collected information and determine the prosecution strategy.

It will start working in the summer. Ukraine signed an agreement to establish an International Center for the Investigation of Russian Aggression in The Hague.

— How long can it take to investigate major cases and bring them to court? Are we talking about years?

— To be honest, we are talking about thousands of pieces of evidence. Out of these thousands of proofs, we want to select the strongest cases that can be successful in court. So, of course, we will not wait for years. Our strategy is building strong cases and bringing them to national courts. So I expect this to be done in months rather than years.

— What could these big cases be? What types of crimes are we talking about?

— I can’t replace the members of the Joint Investigation Team, who take the lead in this process. But I would focus on the most serious and gross violations of international humanitarian law, and we should look at cases that relate to Mariupol, Bucha, and other cases where there were mass graves and gross violations of human rights and human dignity.

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