Of
Ronen Steinke, Berlin
People in civilian clothes who have apparently been shot in the head at close range: the photos and film footage that have circulated around the world from the small town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv speak very strongly of a war crime under the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. In fact, in this set of rules, the “premeditated killing” of a civilian is at the forefront of a long list of acts that can be prosecuted as war crimes. This is formulated in Article 8, paragraph 2, letter a of the statute. It is, so to speak, the clearest of all war crimes.