German prosecutors handed evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine

Complainants hope to use principle of universal jurisdiction in three separate cases

Dossiers of evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine have been presented to German federal prosecutors at the start of a campaign to use the principle of universal jurisdiction to bring war criminals to justice.

The cases were filed on Thursday morning by the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), representing 16 survivors and the families of victims in three separate war crimes cases: an indiscriminate missile attack on a coastal resort near Odesa that killed 22 people; the execution of four men in occupied territory in the Kharkiv region in spring and summer last year; and a series of executions and acts of torture and sexual violence committed outside Kyiv in March 2022.