International Criminal Court chief prosecutor says he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders.
Yahya Sinwar (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail Haniyeh (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023,” said a statement issued by Karim Khan.
The charges include extermination as a crime against humanity, murder, taking hostages, rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes, torture, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.
Similarly, the chief prosecutor said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023.
The charges against them includes starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime, wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health, wilful killing, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity, persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h); Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article
