After the request of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Kahn for judges to issue international arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar for war crimes and crimes against humanity , “it will be necessary to wait for the Court’s decision, which has no set time frame, although the needs, including speed of application, linked to the requested measure cannot be overlooked”. This is what Adnkronos said the lawyer Marco Valerio Verni, contact person for the Law area of ’Online Defense’explaining the implications and next steps related to the request.
What can happen, the possible scenarios
In particular, the “Pre-Trial Chamber I” is responsible for the issue: a sort of collegiate judge for preliminary investigations, to draw a ‘sui generis’ parallel with our system, which will have to verify the validity of the request and, in particular , the motivations underlying it”. “Generally speaking, they may concern, in general terms, the existence of well-founded reasons that, in fact, a crime may have been committed by the indicted persons and against whom arrest is requested”, continues the lawyer according to whom there is then the need to prevent them from “perhaps continuing to commit the crimes of which they are accused or which could compromise the authenticity of the investigations themselves”.
Added to this is the need to “ensure their participation in any trial, given that the International Criminal Court can only proceed in the presence of the accused persons. At the end, the prosecutor’s request may be accepted or rejected”. “In the first case, Netanyahu, in particular, and the Israeli Defense Minister, if they were to travel to any state that has acceded to the Statute of the International Criminal Court, could, at that point, be physically stopped and handed over to the competent authorities”, underlines the lawyer.
“Given the historical significance of the aforementioned (the reference is, in particular, to the Israeli prime minister and his defense minister), there is a lot of pressure around the magistrates interested in the issue – observes the representative of the Law area of ’Defense Online’ – so it is true that Khan considered it his duty to ask that everyone be able to carry out their work with serenity. He himself warned that, otherwise, he would also be willing to resort to article 70 of the Statute of the Court itself, which provides for the possibility of exercise its action also against anyone who may hinder, even with threats, pressure or intimidation, the serene and impartial work of the Court”. “In any case, it must be remembered that, regardless of what the outcome of this request will be, any person investigated and then accused, even before the International Criminal Court, must be considered innocent until intervened, and in definitively, a ruling to the contrary”, specifies the lawyer.
Regarding the fact that Israel is among the small group of countries that do not recognize the International Criminal Court, the Criminal Court “has already expressed its opinion”. The “Preliminary Chamber I, on 5 February 2021, decided that the Court can exercise its criminal jurisdiction over the situation in the State of Palestine, extending it to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem – recalls Verni – Consequently, even the events that occurred on 7 October 2023 and all those that followed fall within the investigative scope of the Court in question. Furthermore, the Court also has jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of State Parties and by citizens of non-State Parties on the territory of one State party. And Palestine ratified the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court in January 2015, and has since then been included among the State parties.”
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