Screengrab of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring war in Gaza on Saturday, October 7, 2023
Eko Hot Blog reports that the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The charges are related to the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Monday.
Khan said the ICC is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders — Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades and better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, 28 October 2023. (Photo: ABIR SULTAN)
The warrants against the Israeli politicians mark the first time the ICC has targeted the top leader of a close ally of the United States (US), according to CNN.
The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.
Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, delivers a speech during a meeting with people at a hall on the sea side of Gaza City, Saturday, April 30, 2022.
Khan said the charges against Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”
“The world was shocked on the 7th of October when people were ripped from their bedrooms, from their homes, from the different kibbutzim in Israel,” Khan told Amanpour, adding that “people have suffered enormously.”
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” Khan told Amanpour.
Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court speaking with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that announced arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders (Photo: CNN)
When reports surfaced last month that the ICC chief prosecutor was considering this course of action, Netanyahu said that any ICC arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials “would be an outrage of historic proportions”.
He added that Israel “has an independent legal system that rigorously investigates all violations of the law.”
Asked by Amanpour about the comments made by Netanyahu, Khan said: “Nobody is above the law.”
He said that if Israel disagrees with the ICC, “they are free, notwithstanding their objections to jurisdiction, to raise a challenge before the judges of the court and that’s what I advise them to do.”
Israel and the United States are not members of the ICC. However, the ICC claims to have jurisdiction over Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank after Palestinian leaders formally agreed to be bound by the court’s founding principles in 2015.
CNN
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