by Oui
Fri Oct 18th, 2024 at 07:20:49 PM EST
ICC Bends Over Backward to Avoid Netanyahu Prosecution
As ICC officials are threatened not to interfere with Israel's genocide of Palestinians, international justice falters, mistrust breeds
Hypocrisy creates mistrust
Offered Israel an escape route through complementarity ...
ICC Loses Test of WWII UN International Order
Crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court committed in the 'Situation' since 13 June 2014
ICC Investigation State of Palestine
Crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed in the Situation since 13 June 2014, the date to which reference is made in the Referral of the Situation to the Office of the Prosecutor.
On 3 March 2021, the Prosecutor announced the opening of the investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine. This followed Pre-Trial Chamber I's decision on 5 February 2021 that the Court could exercise its criminal jurisdiction in the Situation and, by majority, that the territorial scope of this jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
ICC's Battle with Israel and Western Supporters
'Alarming': Palestinians accuse ICC prosecutor of bias after Israel visit | Al Jazeera - 2 Dec 2023 |
While the ICC offers an alternative to Israeli courts, no arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials and commanders.
Occupied West Bank -- On December 2, Eman Nafii was one of dozens of Palestinians invited to meet Prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court in the occupied West Bank. As the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel, Nafi wanted to speak to Khan about her husband and the Israeli occupation.
But Khan spent most of the meeting talking, before his team gave Nafi and other Palestinian victims just 10 minutes to share their stories.
"People got angry. They told him, `You are coming to listen to us for 10 minutes? How are we going to tell you about our stories in 10 minutes," Nafi told Al Jazeera.
"One of the women (with us) was from Gaza. She lost 30 members of her family in the (ongoing war). She shouted, `How can we explain this in 10 minutes.'"
While Khan ended up listening to the victims for about an hour, Palestinians fear that he is applying a double standard by solely focusing his efforts on Hamas and ignoring the grave crimes Israel is accused of having perpetrated over two months of a deadly war.
Many were disappointed that Khan accepted an Israeli invitation to visit Israeli communities and areas that Hamas attacked on October 7, while declining an offer from Palestinians to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
[...]
During his three-day visit, Israel also did not allow Khan to enter Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 17,000 people and displaced most of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes since October 7.
Most of those killed have been women and children, while thousands of young men are now being rounded up, many of them stripped and taken to undisclosed locations. Legal experts have warned that Israel's atrocities in Gaza may soon amount to genocide.
Despite the mounting evidence and ongoing atrocities, Khan has shown little interest in seriously probing Israel, according to Palestinian officials, victims and legal scholars.
"[The Palestinian Authority] gave him retroactive jurisdiction from 2014. [Khan] cannot say that he didn't see crimes being committed [in the occupied territories] from 2014 until October 7," Awadallah told Al Jazeera.
British The Guardian: Yossi Cohen used "vile methods" to pressure the ICC prosecutor in The Hague
Complementarity In the Palestine Situation at the ICC: Could Article 70 Conduct Render Israel "Unwilling" to Investigate Genuinely? | TOI |
In recent allegations that Israeli officials interfered with the ICC's work on Palestine, +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian documented a nine-year, state-orchestrated campaign of spying, hacking and intimidation against the Court. Described as deeply-disturbing attempts to pervert the course of justice, the legal commentary has discussed the potential for ICC arrest warrants under Article 70 of the Rome Statute for offences against the administration of justice, and for Dutch national investigations. Yet the alleged Israeli interference also holds relevance for the admissibility of ICC cases under the "unwillingness" criterion of Article 17 of the Statute.
Even though Israel is not a State Party, and is unlikely to engage with the ICC, procedural avenues exist to challenge the admissibility of cases against Israeli officials by arguing that national investigations are underway, such that the same case is inadmissible at the ICC. However, the allegations that Israel interfered unlawfully in the Prosecutor's investigations would be a strong factual indicator that, instead of being willing genuinely to investigate, Israel has been simply attempting to shield defendants from ICC proceedings. In this regard, Israel might look to how the Office of the Prosecutor ("OTP") addressed similar issues in the Preliminary Examination into Iraq/UK in its decision not to proceed on 9 December 2020, wherein the OTP considered evidence that UK authorities had orchestrated a "cover-up" to protect members of the British armed forces from ICC prosecution.
From my earlier analysis on awkward or weird conduct by lead ICC prosecutor Karim Khan ...
ICC Complementarity and UK War Crimes in Iraq
Recently posted as a comment ...
Will Khan Offer Israel a Stay Out of Jail Card ... | 14 May 2024 |
Will the threatened ICC prosecutor accept Joe's proposal to drop the case in lieu of a joint judicial investigation by the U.S. and Israel, perhaps a neutral country added such as Tovu. 🥵
