Russian officials brief ICC prosecutors on Georgian war

International Criminal Court prosecutors were briefed this week on Russian efforts to bring to book the perpetrators of alleged abuses in the war with Georgia in 2008, the court said Wednesday.

Senior Russian officials informed a delegation from the prosecutor's office "on the nature and progress of Russia's national judicial proceedings relating to crimes allegedly committed during the violence" in the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia, a statement said.

"We have offered to support in every possible way efforts by the Russian judiciary to do justice for all victims of these crimes," said ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who was not part of the two-day visit to Moscow that ended Wednesday.

Moreno-Ocampo's office announced in August 2008 that it was examining possible rights abuses and war crimes, days after the neighbors ended a five-day war over Russian-backed South Ossetia. This week's visit, at Russia's invitation, included meetings with senior officials in the office of the prosecutor general and the ministries of defense and foreign affairs.

The ICC can only prosecute suspected war criminals if countries are unable or unwilling to do so. Georgia is a state party to the founding Rome Statute of the ICC, which therefore has jurisdiction over crimes committed on its territory. Russia is not a state party. The prosecutor's office has visited Georgia in November 2008 and will go there again this year.

Meanwhile, Russian officials have given the green light to the extradition of a prominent Georgian crime boss wanted in Spain on money laundering charges, the Kommersant daily reported on Thursday. Russia's federal migration service removed the last legal obstacle to the extradition of Tariel Oniani by determining that he was not a Russian citizen, Kommersant said, citing an unnamed official in the service.

Russian law does not permit the extradition of Russian citizens to foreign countries. Oniani had claimed Russian citizenship. Born in Georgia in 1952, Oniani was reputed to be a leading boss of the so-called "thieves-in-law," a powerful underworld organisation with roots in the Soviet era.

He had been sought by Spanish police in a huge 2005 sting called Operation "Wasp" in which dozens of mafia bosses from the former Soviet Union were arrested in raids along Spain's Mediterranean coast, Kommersant said.