2023-11-01 22:32:52
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) presented this Wednesday a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes committed by the Israeli Army against media outlets and journalists in the exercise of their work in Gaza, and also against Hamas for murdering an Israeli journalist documenting the attack on a kibbutz.
In the complaint against the Israeli Army, formalized before the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the accusations of this charge of war crimes are justified precisely for the murder of eight Palestinian journalists in the bombings of Gaza from the beginning. of the offensive in that enclave in response to the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7.
(Also read: Is tension growing with Israel? Senior UN official resigns after denouncing genocide in Gaza).
There is also reference to the “intentional destruction, total or partial” of the headquarters of more than 50 media outlets in Gaza, RSF explains in a statement this Wednesday.
Journalist observes an Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.
The organization notes that it is aware that 34 journalists have died since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and of them at least 12 in the exercise of their activity (10 in Gaza, one in Israel and another in Lebanon).
Above all, he insists that even if the Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza were considered to have been victims of military targets, as the Israeli authorities claim, “these attacks have in any case caused manifestly excessive and disproportionate damage among civilians.”
For this reason, RSF understands that the Israeli action coincides with the classification of war crimes.
In its proceedings before the ICC Prosecutor’s Office, Reporteros also attributes to Hamas an action that deserves that same qualification, which is the murder of Israeli journalist Roee Idan, of the Ynet information site, who filmed the first moments of the assault on the kibbutz. Kfar Azza by Palestinian militiamen.
Israeli security forces help a journalist take cover after a rocket attack alert.
Idan, who had left his house early in the morning on October 7, recorded the arrival of the invaders by paraglider and sent the video to the website he worked for before being shot down.
The ICC is, in principle, competent because the events occurred in Palestine or because the perpetrators are Palestinians, even if the alleged war crimes were committed by Palestinians outside their territory, in this case in Israel.
(Keep reading: Foreign Ministry once again rejects Israel’s ‘actions’ in Gaza: invokes cessation of hostilities).
The reason is that Palestine is a party to the convention of this international judicial body (it has signed and ratified it), unlike Israel, which has refused to enter the control system.
RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire underlined that “the breadth, severity and repetition of international crimes against journalists, in particular in Gaza, require a priority investigation by the ICC prosecutor.
We have been asking for it since 2018. The current tragic events demonstrate the extreme urgency of its mobilization.”
Deloire was thus referring to the fact that this is the third complaint of alleged war crimes committed against Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
The general secretary of Reporters Without Borders, Christophe Deloire.
Photo:
AFP / Bertrand Guay
The first was formalized in 2018 motivated by several informants killed or injured during the so-called “March of the Great Return”; and the second in May 2021 after the bombing of around twenty media outlets by Israeli forces.
In addition, Reporteros also supported the complaint filed by the Al Jazeera network for the murder of its Palestinian journalist Shirin Abu Akleh in the West Bank on May 11, 2022.
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The Prosecutor’s Office has not reported in all this time what it has done with all these complaints, but Antoine Bernard, legal officer of RSF, said that “we have reasons to think” that they are part of the summary that is being investigated.
The prosecutor, who has active investigations into the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the Israeli offensive in Gaza launched in response, can conduct these investigations secretly and does not even have to report in the event that he issues arrest warrants against alleged potentially accused persons.
EFE
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