Cyber attack on International Criminal Court sparks witness security concerns

Witnesses in the 17 cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC) will be taking urgent security precautions after the court confirmed that its heavily protected computer system was hacked and what Dutch sources describe as “a large number of sensitive documents” allegedly stolen.

Since its establishment in 2002, the court in The Hague has been handling investigations involving war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, in countries such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Uganda and the Philippines.

In March, it issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin, accusing him of war crimes, specifically the forced deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia after his troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

That was the first time the global court has issued a warrant for a leader of one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

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Russia, however, does not recognise the court and described the warrants as “legally void”.

The court has confirmed that it had noticed “unusual activity involving its information systems” at the end of last week. It refused to comment on how serious the hack was, whether it had been fully resolved, or who might be behind it.

However, legal and security sources close to the ICC said highly sensitive documents could have been accessed, including criminal evidence, the names of persons of interest or, most worryingly, the names of protected witnesses in any of the cases before the court.

The sources also said the court had sought the outside assistance of cybersecurity experts at the Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Centre. This was confirmed on Wednesday by the country’s Ministry of Justice and Security.

[ ICC issues arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes ]

The president of the ICC Bar Association, Marie-Hélène Proulx, declined to specify what security measures had been taken in response to the hack, only that “lawyers for defendants and victims” were being affected by them in the same way as other court staff.

“We commend them and hope the situation will be resolved quickly,” she said.

Last year, the Dutch security service AIVD, in its annual report, said the ICC was “of interest to Russia because it is investigating possible Russian war crimes in Georgia and Ukraine”.

In June 2022, the same service detained a Russian military agent attempting to infiltrate the court by seeking a job as an intern. The man has since been indicted in the US.