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What’s next as ICC prosecutor seeks warrants for Netanyahu, Hamas leaders?

With the arrest warrants that Karim Khan is requesting now, the ICC is embarking on an unprecedented journey in one of the most high-profile cases that it has ever heard since its establishment in 2002.

What will now happen is that the pre-trial chamber judges will have to decide if the request for the arrest warrants is valid.

  • They will look at the jurisdiction of the court, and we know that since 2021, this court has decided that it can rule over crimes that have been committed in the Palestinian territory.
  • That’s even though Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which is the ICC’s founding document.

These judges will have to decide, probably within a few weeks.

If they really decide to issue these arrest warrants, then the 124 members who have signed the Rome Statute are obliged to arrest these people when they come into their countries and have to transfer them to the Hague, where they will be detained and put on trial.

I have to note though, that countries like the US, China and Israel, for example, are not signatories, so these countries do not have that same obligation.

But still, this is a very significant first step in a very prominent case.

Source: Step Vaesen – Al Jazeera