UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The International Criminal Court prosecutor faced calls Tuesday for swift action against Israeli leaders and a fierce Russian attack over the ICC’s arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Karim Khan responded by telling the UN Security Council that he would 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 Ukraine.
Libya’s UN Ambassador Taher El-Sonni told Khan that if the Libyan cases the ICC is investigating are so convoluted that they cannot be concluded before the end of 2025, he should devote the court’s efforts to the war in Gaza.
El-Sonni claimed that Israeli forces were committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The world expects the ICC to “be courageous and issue arrest warrants against officials of the Israeli regime who have repeatedly repeated that they want to commit genocide against Palestinians,” El-Sonni said.
“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 time?”
El-Sonni was referring to the recent Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where 1.2 million Palestinians had fled in search of safety. The U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees said on Tuesday that nearly 450,000 people had fled Rafah in the past week, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that there was no safe and sound place anywhere in Gaza.
“This is the real test of the ICC,” El-Sonni said. “Is the ICC politicized or is it independent and neutral?”
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya called the ICC a politicized “puppet body” that is controlled by the West and has “absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March 2023 for alleged war crimes and accused the Russian president of personal responsibility for the abduction of children from Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
Two months later, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Khan. The ICC called this arrest warrant “unacceptable” and said the court “will remain steadfast in exercising its lawful 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 investigation into the situation in the Palestinian territories in 2015 and a formal investigation in 2021.
“In this regard, one wonders whether the effectiveness of the ICC in this area has been compromised by the fact that a new bipartisan bill has been submitted to the US Congress that would impose sanctions on ICC officials involved in investigations not only against the US “But also against their allies,” he told the Security Council.
Last week, two Republican congressmen introduced the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to impose sanctions on ICC officials who act against the United States or its allies, including Israel.
They cited reports that the ICC was poised to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials over their military offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and killed about 250 People were killed and 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 over 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and sparked global protests, according to Gaza health authorities.
Algeria’s deputy UN ambassador, Nacim Gaouaoui, expressed hope that the ICC will “take a serious approach” to its Palestinian investigation and “show that it is not a tool that some members of the international community use to threaten whoever they want.” , whenever you want.” “
Khan said he wanted to assure the Russian ambassador that “we will not be influenced by arrest warrants against me, nor by the arrest of elected officials of the court by the Russian Federation, nor by any other elected officials in any other jurisdiction.”
Khan said the ICC is striving to be “deaf to the noise” and this should be a time “when the law is allowed to breathe” whether in dealing with world crises such as Ukraine, Gaza and the Palestinians, Libya or the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.
“We have a duty to stand up for justice and for the victims,” Khan said. “We will stand up and apply the law with integrity and independence.”
