Attorney General Merrick B. Garland praised the efforts of the Ukrainian people to defend democracy and uphold the rule of law in a meeting with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, and announced additional US actions to assist Ukraine in identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved in war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.
“In the face of Russia’s continued aggression and assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, the United States stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine,” said Attorney General Garland.
“America – and the rest of the world – has seen and read the heartbreaking accounts of brutality and death that have resulted from Russia’s unjust invasion of Ukraine.”
Attorney General Garland announced the formation of a War Crimes Accountability Team to coordinate and strengthen the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to hold those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine accountable.
This initiative will bring together the Department’s top experts in human rights, war crimes, and other atrocities investigations, as well as provide a wide range of technical assistance, including operational assistance and advice on criminal prosecutions, evidence collection, forensics, and relevant legal analysis.
The team will also play a key role in the Department’s ongoing investigation into potential war crimes over which the US has jurisdiction, such as the assassination and wounding of American journalists covering Russia’s unprovoked aggression in Ukraine.
“War criminals have no place to hide.” Attorney General Garland stated, “The United States Justice Department will pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.”
“The Justice Department will be relentless in our efforts to hold accountable every person complicit in the commission of war crimes, torture, and other grave violations during the unprovoked conflict in Ukraine, working alongside our domestic and international partners.”
The Attorney General has appointed Eli Rosenbaum as Counselor for War Crimes Accountability to lead this effort. Rosenbaum is a 36-year Justice Department veteran who was previously Director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which was tasked with identifying, denaturalizing, and deporting Nazi war criminals.
Rosenbaum will coordinate efforts across the Justice Department and the federal government to hold those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine accountable in his role as Counselor for War Crimes Accountability.
Other prosecutors from the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP), including Acting Section Chief Hope Olds and prosecutors Christian Levesque, Christina Giffin, and Courtney Urschel, will assist Rosenbaum in his work.
In addition, the Justice Department will add more personnel to its counter-Russian illicit finance and sanctions evasion efforts with Ukraine and other partners.
The Department will provide Ukraine with an expert Justice Department prosecutor to advise on kleptocracy, corruption, and money laundering, among other things. It also intends to send two expert attorneys from the Office of International Affairs (OIA) to support the Department’s KleptoCapture Task Force, one to a US embassy in Europe and the other to a US embassy in the Middle East.
These senior attorneys will collaborate closely with their counterparts in EU member states and Middle Eastern countries to facilitate mutual legal assistance and extraditions relating to Russian illicit finance and sanctions evasion, including for designated Russian oligarchs who have backed the Russian regime and its efforts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty.
In March, Attorney General Garland announced the KleptoCapture Task Force, which will use the Department’s tools and authorities to combat attempts to evade or undermine the US government’s economic response to Russian military aggression.
Since then, the task force has facilitated the seizure of two sanctioned individuals’ superyachts, dismantled Russian criminal networks, and enforced sanctions violations, among other things.