The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Karim Khan, on Monday, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader 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.
BREAKING: In an exclusive interview with Christiane @amanpour, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has announced the Court is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. pic.twitter.com/B5MrsYcZXr
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Khan is also seeking warrants for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.
Khan said the charges against Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”
As to the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, Khan told Amanpour they include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, and deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan explains the charges against top Hamas and Israeli leadership in detail in this excerpt from his interview with @amanpour this morning at The Hague.
The world exclusive airs in full today at 1pm ET | 6pm BST on @cnni pic.twitter.com/fyXkclT8BQ
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Asked by Amanpour about Netanyahu’s statement last month that ICC arrest warrants against Israeli political and military leaders “would be an outrage of historic proportions,” and Israel “has an independent legal system that rigorously investigates all violations of the law,” Khan said, “Nobody is above the law,” adding, “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.”
The ICC claims to have jurisdiction over Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria because the PA in 2015 embraced the court’s founding principles – an act which was a blatant violation of the Oslo Accords.
And so, Netanyahu who failed to punish the Ramallah gang in 2015 will have to stay out of most of Europe in 2024, where he could be arrested.
