The International Criminal Court, the target of a “cyber security incident”

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on Tuesday that it had detected, at the end of last week, “an abnormal activity” affecting its computer systems, write AFP and Agerpres.

Without using the term cyber attack, however, the Hague-based tribunal said it was forced to react urgently to “respond to this cyber security incident” and “mitigate the impact”.

“Answers were given and additional security measures were taken, with the help of the authorities of the host country,” the international jurisdiction based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, said in a short statement, refusing to provide more details.

During the last years, the International Criminal Court has been the target of several espionage attempts.

In April 2022, a Russian national who had multiple identities tried to infiltrate the ICC as an intern. The Dutch secret services unmasked him and refused him entry to the territory of the Netherlands. Expelled to Brazil, he was arrested there for fraud and sentenced in July to 15 years in prison.

In March, a 37-year-old man named Sergei Cherkasov was also indicted for espionage in the US, where he is accused of living under a false identity for two years.

Serghei Cerkasov “worked as an illegal agent of the Russian intelligence services under the Brazilian identity Victor Muller Ferreira”, according to a statement from the federal prosecutor in Washington.

The International Criminal Court is investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine.

She issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March, accusing the Russian president of war crimes for the “illegal deportation” of thousands of Ukrainian children during the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. These accusations are rejected by Moscow.

In retaliation, Russia announced in August that it was including ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on the Russian list of people targeted by sanctions.

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