Lukashenko's Fear Is Becoming A Reality
- 17.03.2026, 9:49
The court in The Hague, which had tried the dictator's friends, took up the investigation against himself.
The prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by Lukashenko's regime. The ruler may await trial in The Hague. The website Charter97.org looked at which dictators have been convicted by the ICC:
Slobodan Milosevic
A former president of Yugoslavia and leader of Serbia in the 1990s. Milosevic was accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. In 2001, Serbian authorities handed him over to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
The trial began in 2002 and became one of the largest in the history of international law. However, it could not be completed: in March 2006, Milosevic died in a prison cell in The Hague before sentencing.
Charles Taylor
A former Liberian president who came to power after a civil war. His regime was closely linked to the conflict in neighboring Sierra Leone.
Taylor was accused of supporting the rebel group Revolutionary United Front, which was notorious for massacres, torture, use of child soldiers and brutal attacks on civilians. He resigned from the presidency in 2003 and was handed over to international justice a few years later.
The trial took place in The Hague under the auspices of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2012, Taylor was found guilty on most counts and sentenced to 50 years in prison. It was the first time since the Nuremberg trials that an international court convicted a former head of state.
Radovan Karadzic
Political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian war in the 1990s and president of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska.
The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia charged him with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The most serious charge concerned the mass murder of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.
Karadzic went into hiding for more than a decade and was arrested in Serbia in 2008. A court found him guilty in 2016, and an appeals court later increased his sentence. The final sentence was life imprisonment.
Ratko Mladic
Head commander of the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian war. He was considered one of the main military leaders of operations against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
Mladic was accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The central episode of the case was the Srebrenica massacre, which international courts recognized as an act of genocide.
After a years-long manhunt, Mladic was arrested in Serbia in 2011 and handed over to a tribunal in The Hague. In 2017, a court found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Bilana Plavšić
One of the Bosnian Serb political leaders during the war and former president of Republika Srpska.
She was charged with crimes against humanity related to ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian conflict. Unlike many other defendants, Plavšić admitted part of the charges and cooperated with the investigation.
In 2003, a tribunal in The Hague sentenced her to 11 years in prison. She became one of the highest-ranking female politicians convicted by an international court.
Jean Kambanda
The former prime minister of Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, in which some 800,000 people were killed.
Kambanda became the first head of government in history to plead guilty to genocide before an international court. He was tried by the International Tribunal for Rwanda. In 1998, the court found him guilty on all charges and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Rodrigo Duterte
The former president of the Philippines, known for his hardline campaign against drugs.
Human rights organizations claimed that thousands of people were killed by police and unknown armed groups without trial during the campaign. These events became the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on March11, 2025 after landing at Manila International Airport by police on an International Criminal Court warrant. From there, he was taken to The Hague in the Netherlands.