The arrest warrants issued on Wednesday, November 21 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant mark a historic turning point. For the first time since the Court’s creation in 1998, political leaders are being indicted against the wishes of their Western allies.
At the origin of the searches, a prosecutor, Karim Khan, today attacked from all sides, will have opened a gap that the judges have rushed into. By issuing these arrest warrants, they strengthened the credibility of the ICC by de facto refuting accusations of two-tier justice. Even if their decision will not stop the ongoing wars, judges and prosecutors are committed to the mandate of a Court created to fight impunity for perpetrators of crimes. “that challenge the imagination and deeply shock the human conscience”as its status says.
For a long time, the institution only persecuted African officials and found itself in the dock for allegedly favoring Western policies of “diet change” on the continent. With the indictment against Vladimir Putin in March 2023, the ICC finally dared to prosecute the head of a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to the great satisfaction of Westerners, led by the United States.
Never before has the ICC benefited from such political, financial and judicial support. But the accusation against Vladimir Putin also reinforced the feeling of double standards. And until arrest warrants were issued against Israeli officials, emphasizes Reed Brody, famous American lawyer and human rights defender, international justice was used. “almost exclusively to address crimes committed by defeated enemies, as in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, powerless outcasts, especially Africans, or adversaries of the West such as Vladimir Putin or Slobodan Milosevic.”
During its twenty-two years of existence, the ICC has rarely opposed Western interests. Investigations into alleged crimes committed by the US military in Afghanistan and secret CIA prisons in Europe were finally suspended in 2021, as were those targeting British troops in Iraq for alleged acts of torture. This time, the prosecutor’s investigations into the war in Gaza have reached the arrest warrant phase.
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