Monday, May 20, 2024 - The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the court’s prosecutor Karim Khan has said.
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday, May 20,
Khan said the ICC’s prosecution team is also seeking warrants for Israel’s
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders known as
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades who is
better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.
The warrants against the Israeli politicians mark the first
time the ICC has targeted the leader of a close ally of the United States.
The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of Russian
President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over
Moscow’s war on Ukraine, and the Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application
for the arrest warrants.
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 CNN.
“The fact that Hamas fighters
need water doesn’t justify denying water from all the civilian population of
Gaza,” he added.
More than 35,500 Palestinians have been killed and more than
79,000 wounded in Gaza since October 7, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on
Monday. CNN cannot independently verify the figures.
Netanyahu called the decision “a political outrage.”
“They will not deter us and
we will continue in the war until the hostages are released and Hamas is
destroyed,” he said at a meeting of the parliamentary group of his Likud party.
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.”
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people across
several locations in southern Israel on October 7 and took some 250 hostages
into Gaza. Many of the hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Khan said it meant crimes continued to be committed against
“so many innocent Israelis … that are held hostage by Hamas and families that
are waiting for their return.”
Khan said his team has a “variety of evidence” to support
the application for arrest warrants against Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri,
including authenticated video footage and photographs from the attacks as well
as evidence from eyewitnesses and survivors.
Khan said Israel had “every right and indeed an obligation
to get hostages back, but you must do so by complying with the law.”
Responding to the announcement by Khan, Hamas said in a
statement that it “strongly condemns the attempts of the ICC Prosecutor to
equate victims with aggressors by issuing arrest warrants against a number of
Palestinian resistance leaders without legal basis.”
“Hamas calls on the ICC
Prosecutor to issue arrest warrants against all war criminals among the
occupation leaders, officers, and soldiers who participated in crimes against
the Palestinian people, and demands the cancellation of all arrest warrants
issued against Palestinian resistance leaders,” the group added.
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