UNITED NATIONS — The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor faced demands on Tuesday for swift action against Israeli leaders and a fierce Russian attack over the ICC’s arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin stemming from Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Karim Khan responded by telling the UN Security Council that he will not be influenced or intimidated as his team investigates possible war crimes or crimes against humanity in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, as well as in Ukraine.
Libya’s UN ambassador, Taher El-Sonni, told Khan that if the Libyan cases the ICC is investigating are so complex that they will not be concluded by the end of 2025, he should allocate the court’s efforts to the war in Gaza.
El-Sonni stated that genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being perpetrated by Israeli forces.
The world expects the ICC “to be courageous and issue arrest warrants against officials of the Israeli regime who have repeatedly stated that they want to commit genocidal actions against Palestinians,” said El-Sonni.
“What are you waiting for, Mr. Khan?” he added. “Don’t you see the threats against civilians, the potential threats against civilians in Rafah and the massacre that would happen at any moment?”
El-Sonni was referring to the latest Israeli offensive on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where 1.2 million Palestinians have fled in search of safety. The UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday that nearly 450,000 fled Rafah last week, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated that there is no safe place anywhere in Gaza.
“This is the true test of the ICC,” El-Sonni said. “Is the ICC politicized or is it independent and neutral?”
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia called the ICC a politicized, Western-controlled “puppet body” that “has absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin for alleged war crimes in March 2023, accusing the Russian president of personal responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
Two months later, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Khan. The ICC called that order “unacceptable” and said the court “will remain relentless in carrying out its legal mandate to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.”
Nebenzia also accused the ICC of having achieved nothing since it began a preliminary examination of the situation in the Palestinian territories in 2015 and a formal investigation in 2021.
“In this regard, the question arises whether the effectiveness of the ICC in this regard has been affected by the fact that a new bipartisan bill has been submitted to the US Congress to sanction ICC officials involved in investigating not only the US, but its allies,” he told the Security Council.
Last week, two Republican congressmen introduced the “Countering Illegitimate Courts Act” to impose sanctions on ICC officials who persecute the United States or its allies, including Israel.
They cited reports that the ICC is about to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials for their military offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and saw around 250 people taken hostage. Supporters of the law said that if the ICC were a legitimate court, it should have issued arrest warrants for Hamas leaders.
Israel’s military retaliation, now in its eighth month, has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials, and sparked protests around the world.
Algeria’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Nacim Gaouaoui, expressed hope that the ICC will adopt “a serious approach” to its Palestinian investigations and “demonstrate that it is not a tool used by some members of the international community to threaten whoever they want, whenever they want.” . ”
Khan said he wanted to assure the Russian ambassador that “we will not be influenced, whether by arrest warrants for me or by the arrest of elected court officials by the Russian Federation, or by other elected officials in any other jurisdiction.”
Khan said the ICC strives to be “deaf to the noise” and that this should be a time “to allow the law to breathe”, whether dealing with global crises such as Ukraine, Gaza and the Palestinians, Libya or the minority Rohingya Muslim in Myanmar.
“We have a duty to defend justice, to defend victims,” Khan said. “We will stand up and apply the law with integrity, with independence.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
