2023-11-14 11:00:12
Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, during an interview in The Hague, Netherlands, October 12, 2023. PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/REUTERS
The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, “ promised he would not forget the children of Gaza. We civilians urgently need him to keep his promise “, wrote Raji Sourani on the Democracy Now website on November 10. The house of the Palestinian lawyer, specialist in the defense of human rights, was destroyed in the Israeli bombings which fell on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas attack of October 7, which left 1,200 dead . Then, like in a house of cards, that of a loved one in which they had taken refuge. But his fight and that of his NGO, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), mark no truce.
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In just over a month, more than 11,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-administered territory’s health ministry. On November 9, the NGOs PCHR, Al-Haq and Al Mezan asked the ICC “to quickly issue arrest warrants against people suspected of these crimes within the political, military and administrative apparatus” Israeli. In their report to the prosecutor, the three organizations cite President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Their French lawyer, Emmanuel Daoud, refers to “crimes of genocide”, “incitement to genocide”, “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”. “A genocide in progress”this is also what is denounced by more than a hundred associations and nearly three hundred lawyers who joined the document filed on November 9 by lawyers Gilles Devers and Khaled Al-Shouli.
Since October 7, the prosecutor’s office has received several “complaints” denouncing in turn the crimes of Hamas and those of Israel. All are demanding arrest warrants. And they all talk about” emergency “. “We still hope to save lives”explains Yael Vias Gvirsman, lawyer for thirty-four relatives of Hamas hostages and families of people killed during the October 7 attack in the kibbutzim of southern Israel. “There is an emergency, because there are ongoing crimes – disappearances and hostage-taking – which are committed against children and against the elderly”explains the lawyer on the phone, from Tel Aviv.
The “rules” of war
On October 29, in front of the Rafah terminal in Egypt, Karim Khan promised to “protect the children of Gaza”. Until then, he had only made a short statement to two British media outlets, attempting to justify more than two years of inaction since the opening of an investigation by the former court prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda. Because this is not the first time that the Israel-Palestine file has reached the ICC desk. After an eight-year preliminary examination, carried out at the request of the Palestinian Authority, following Palestine’s accession to the court in 2015, the ICC ended up opening an investigation in March 2021. It concerns crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza war and occupation Israeli West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Karim Khan extended this investigation to ongoing crimes.
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