The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for three people wanted on suspicion of committing war crimes during the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.
The court said on June 30 that the arrest warrants were issued for Lieutenant General Mikhail Mindzayev, Gamlet Guchmazov, and David Sanakoyev, who served in the separatist government of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia.
The statement said that its judges ruled six days earlier that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that each of these three suspects bears responsibility for war crimes.”
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that civilians perceived to be ethnically Georgian were arrested in the South Ossetian part of Georgia, and subsequently detained, mistreated, and kept in harsh detention conditions in a detention center in Tskhinvali, before being used as a bargaining tool by Russia and the South Ossetian de facto authorities, and used for an exchange of prisoners and detainees," the statement said.
"As a result of the exchange, the detainees were forced to leave South Ossetia."
The court launched an investigation in 2016 into the war that claimed hundreds of lives and left thousands of people displaced.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg concluded that “grave human rights abuses” occurred in South Ossetia, which is currently controlled by Russia.
Mindzayev and Guchmazov served as top officials of the breakaway South Ossetia's separatist government's de facto Interior Ministry, while Sanakoyev was the region's de facto presidential representative for human rights.
Mindzayev and Guchmazov face charges of unlawful confinement, torture and inhuman treatment, outrages against personal dignity, hostage-taking, and the unlawful transfer of civilians both during and after the five-day war that erupted on August 8, 2008.
Sanakoyev, meanwhile, faces charges of hostage-taking and the unlawful transfer of civilians.
Russia recognized South Ossetia and Georgia’s other breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent countries after the 2008 war and has maintained thousands of troops in both regions since then.