CRIMINAL ASPECTS OF WORKING WITH EVIDENCE OF WAR CRIMES

Abstract

The article notes that the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014 and became large-scale on February 24, 2022, has led to numerous war crimes that must be investigated both in national and international jurisdiction. It is noted that in order to prove the guilt of specific individuals in committing such crimes, proper recording and preservation of evidence is of crucial importance. Attention is focused on the gaps in working with evidentiary information, especially in martial law conditions, and individual aspects of collecting and recording evidentiary information in places of hostilities are emphasized.The need to improve the quality of collecting and recording evidentiary information in order to submit it to the International Criminal Court and relevant expert institutions is emphasized.It is noted that in forensics, evidence is considered as a set of actions aimed at collecting, researching, verifying and evaluating evidence.It is emphasized that the peculiarity of war crimes is their scale, the specificity of the circumstances of their commission, the difficulty of access to the places of the events, and the danger of loss or destruction of the evidence base.The opinions of individual scholars are clarified regarding the importance of documenting the entire process of working with evidence, from its discovery at the scene to its referral to court, that is, the “chain of custody” of evidence, ensuring its proper packaging, labeling, and documentation of each stage of movement.The authors agree with the opinion of scholars that in order for factual data to acquire the status of evidence in criminal proceedings, they must meet such criteria as relevance and admissibility, and only then can they be used in the process of proving.References are given to scholars who have devoted their research to the problems of evidence and proving in general or in separate areas of criminal procedural activity related to the investigation of certain types of crimes, proving in relation to certain categories of persons, or in special conditions.The conclusions note that identifying, recording, and preserving evidence of war crimes is a difficult but key task of forensics, the solution of which, in turn, will contribute to proving the guilt of specific individuals in national and international courts.