JERUSALEM — By accusing the heads of Israel and Hamas of battle crimes, the Worldwide Legal Court docket’s prime prosecutor positioned them amongst world leaders notorious for heinous acts towards humanity.
The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, introduced arrest warrants Monday towards two Israeli leaders — together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and three Hamas leaders.
The prosecutor targeted on actions taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 when militants stormed southern Israel, killing round 1,200 folks and taking some 250 hostages, and on Israel’s navy response in Gaza, which has killed roughly 35,000 Palestinians, in accordance with the Gaza well being ministry.
Netanyahu condemned the choice Monday, calling it “an entire distortion of actuality.”
“I reject with disgust the Hague prosecutor’s comparability between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas,” Netanyahu stated.
In a press release, Hamas accused the prosecutor of attempting to “equate the sufferer with the executioner.” It stated it has the proper to withstand Israeli occupation, together with “armed resistance.”
The ICC is the everlasting court docket of final resort, established in 2002 to prosecute people for battle crimes, crimes towards humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. A number of international locations do not settle for the court docket’s jurisdiction, together with Israel, the USA, China and Russia.
This is a more in-depth have a look at the accusations towards Israeli and Hamas leaders, and a few of the leaders world wide who’ve additionally been served arrest warrants from the ICC:
The Hamas officers — Ismail Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif — are accused of planning and instigating eight battle crimes and crimes towards humanity, amongst them extermination, homicide, taking hostages, rape and torture.
“The crimes towards humanity charged have been a part of a widespread and systematic assault towards the civilian inhabitants of Israel by Hamas,” the choice launched at present by the ICC acknowledged.
“There are affordable grounds to consider that hostages taken from Israel have been stored in inhumane circumstances, and that some have been topic to sexual violence, together with rape, whereas being held in captivity.”
Hamas rejected the accusations.
Sinwar and Deif are believed to be hiding in Gaza. Haniyeh, the supreme chief of Hamas, relies in Qatar.
Netanyahu and Israeli protection minister Yoav Gallant are accused of seven battle crimes and crimes towards humanity, together with extermination and homicide. They’re additionally accused of hunger of civilians as a technique of warfare, deliberately directing acts towards a civilian inhabitants, persecution, and willfully inflicting nice struggling.
The U.N. says a “full-blown famine” is going on in northern Gaza, because the territory faces a near-complete cutoff from help provides. Israel has been accused of closely proscribing the move of help into the territory, an allegation it denies.
Netanyahu and Gallant don’t face any speedy threat of prosecution. Israel just isn’t a member of the court docket, however the specter of arrest may make it tough for the Israeli leaders to journey overseas.
The ICC has issued arrest warrants for different leaders over the previous roughly 20 years because the court docket was established.
In March of final yr, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of the kidnapping of kids from Ukraine to Russia. He was charged together with Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Kids’s Rights.
The probabilities of Putin dealing with trial on the ICC are extremely unlikely as a result of Moscow doesn’t acknowledge the court docket’s jurisdiction or extradite its nationals. Russia responded by issuing its personal arrest warrants for Khan, the court docket’s prosecutor, and different ICC judges.
Certainly one of Africa’s most infamous warlords, Joseph Kony, was issued an arrest warrant from the ICC in 2005. Because the chief of the Lord’s Resistance Military in northern Uganda, he faces 12 counts of crimes towards humanity together with homicide, sexual enslavement and rape, and 21 counts of battle crimes.
Regardless of an internationally-backed manhunt and a $5 million reward, Kony has evaded seize and stays at giant. The ICC is anticipated to start the court docket’s first in absentia listening to in October.
Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir is needed by the ICC over accusations associated to the battle in Darfur. Al-Bashir was served with arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010 accusing him of 5 counts of crimes towards humanity and three counts of genocide.
He stays at giant, after spending a while in a jail in Khartoum from 2019 to 2023. Earlier this yr, the ICC stated there had been “progress” within the case towards al-Bashir.
Longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was charged with two counts of crimes towards humanity for his brutal crackdown throughout the Arab Spring in 2011. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Gadhafi in June 2011, however closed the case in November 2011, after his dying.
Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the dictator’s son, was charged together with two others in 2011 and stays at giant.
