The International Criminal Court is seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, it’s been reported.
The ICC want to charge the pair for war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7 attacks and following war in Gaza, the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN.
Khan also revealed it was seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and 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.
He said the charges against the Hamas members would include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention”.
He added: “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”.
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Netanyahu and Gallant could face charges of “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict”, Khan said.
He maintained that “nobody is above the law” and if Israel disagrees with the charges, “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.”
Neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC, but the organisation does have jurisdiction over Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank after Palestinian leaders agreed to the court’s founding principles in 2015.
Last month, reports surfaced that the ICC chief prosecutor was considering pressing charges against Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister responded with outrage, claiming that his country already has a good enough law enforcement.
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He said any arrest warrants for senior government members and military officials “would be an outrage of historic proportions”, and that Israel “has an independent legal system that rigorously investigates all violations of the law.”
This is the first time the ICC has targeted a top world leader that’s also a close ally of the US. They have previously issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine.
A panel of judges from the ICC will now have to look over Khan’s application for the arrest warrants and decide whether to go ahead with them or not.