The International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA), which began work in The Hague on Monday, faces the task of collecting the entire huge array of evidence, classifying them as aggression and linking them directly to the highest military and political leadership of the aggressor country, head of Eurojust Ladislav Hamran said.

At a press conference dedicated to the opening of the ICPA in The Hague on Monday, Hamran noted that the opening of the center is a unique, unprecedented international platform for cooperation in legal history.

He said that ICPA would support the national investigation and prosecutors from Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland who investigate crimes of aggression.

According to the head of Eurojust, the main task of ICPA is to provide key evidence, to start building a case on aggression.

Hamran said they don't want to wait for the end of the conflict and decided that they will support the partners who have launched their national investigations, and will centralize the already available evidence, analyze it.

The head of Eurojust stressed said that today there is a huge amount of evidence that is available in various jurisdictions, adding that never in history they had so much evidence of aggression as today. It’s about various videos, photos from places, GPS, data from mobile phones, etc.

According to Hamran, firstly, aggression must be proved, for example, through evidence of bombing, attacks by armed forces on the ground, at sea and in the air.

At the same time, as the head of Eurojust noted, these proofs are not enough in themselves. He believes that it’s also necessary to link all these attacks to specific people who hold leadership positions – political and military leaders. According to Hamran, this will be another big challenge for them, since they must be sure that they have admissible evidence, that all elements of the crime are correctly documented. He said they would evaluate all the evidence, translate it into two languages and prepare this international document either for a national court, or an international one that already exists or will exist in the future.

Hamran added that, in his opinion, the issue of the form and location of the future tribunal is not of key importance at the moment, as negotiations on its creation are still ongoing.

The head of Eurojust expressed confidence that through those united international efforts, the ICPA will become a symbol of unwavering commitment to respect the rule of law and will eventually lead to punishment.