Some critics believe that Karim Khan, the controversial prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed arrest warrant applications against Taliban senior leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Taliban chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani for crimes against humanity in an attempt to influence the Trump administration and Congress.
Khan’s actions coincided with the U.S. Senate preparing to vote on a bill that would sanction the ICC for requesting arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. The House bill, receiving bipartisan support, was passed on Jan. 9.
Khan’s move has been characterized as a last-ditch effort to influence the Senate’s decision, according to Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He expressed concern that some officials in Washington might be swayed by this maneuver, despite Khan and the ICC’s previous actions targeting Americans and seeking arrests of Israelis, which he believes have already crossed significant boundaries and should not go unanswered.
A spokesperson from the European Union said that “the EU respects the court’s independence and impartiality.”
While the spokesperson did not speak to charges against Israeli officials, they said, “The EU and its Member States support initiatives that ensure accountability and regularly recall that systematic and systemic violations against women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the ICC of which Afghanistan is a state party.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with senior military officials during the strike on Iran. (Avi Ohayon/ GPO)
A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, did not respond to Fox News Digital’s questions about the equivalence between warrants for Taliban and Israeli leaders.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., Tweeted on Jan. 24 that he plans to vote for the ICCA, explaining that “the ICC’s treatment towards Israel and equivocating to Hamas was unacceptable. We should absolutely sanction the ICC.”
Goldberg, a former national security advisor during President Donald Trump’s first term, warned “the sanctions coming out of Congress will certainly make life difficult for the officials and groups who are waging lawfare against us, but to actually cripple ICC operations and end the lawfare, we will need the Trump administration to impose sanctions directly on the ICC. I’m not sure American service members are safe until that happens.”
