Pre-European Council Meeting: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2023-03-22
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. The barbarism and criminality of Vladimir Putin is plain to see and he should be investigated and prosecuted for his undoubted war crimes and crimes against humanity. Of course, an incredible irony is at work when Joe Biden also suggests that is a good idea, given he represents a country that refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, possibly because that country might then have to issue arrest warrants for US political and military figures in respect of the same crimes against humanity and war crimes that were committed by the US in Iraq. At least one of those actions that should be a war crime was the use of depleted uranium weapons, which poisoned the water and land and led to widespread increases in cancer and genetic abnormalities among young Iraqi people.
Now the British Government intends to sell those same depleted uranium weapons to the Ukrainians to use in the Russia-Ukraine war but there is not a word of criticism. The credibility of Western condemnation of the undoubted war crimes of Putin in Ukraine is simply non-existent when those countries do not immediately call for the arrest of Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, its national security minister, and, for that matter, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-22