"Outrageous": US President slams International Criminal Court's request to arrest Israel PM
May 20, 2024
Washington, DC [US], May 21 : US President Joe Biden said on Monday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor's application for arrest warrants against the Israeli leaders is 'outrageous' and reaffirmed his support for Israel amid ongoing war with Hamas.
President Biden also asserted that there is no 'equivalence' between Israel and Hamas.
"The ICC prosecutor's application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence -- none -- between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security," President Biden said in a statement.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for arrest warrants against top Israeli and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said on Monday that his office had applied for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders for alleged crimes committed during the Hamas-led October 7 attack on southern Israel and Israel's subsequent war on Gaza.
Moreover, the US State Department also issued its statement over the matter and rejected the announcement from the ICC Prosecutor, calling it 'shameful'.
"The United States fundamentally rejects the announcement today from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he is applying for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, together with warrants for Hamas terrorists. We reject the Prosecutor's equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans," US State departement said in a statement.
"Moreover, the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. The ICC was established by its state parties as a court of limited jurisdiction. Those limits are rooted in principles of complementarity, which do not appear to have been applied here amid the Prosecutor's rush to seek these arrest warrants rather than allowing the Israeli legal system a full and timely opportunity to proceed. In other situations, the Prosecutor deferred to national investigations and worked with states to allow them time to investigate. The Prosecutor did not afford the same opportunity to Israel, which has ongoing investigations into allegations against its personnel," it added.
ICC Prosecutor Khan announced his office had "reasonable grounds" to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bear "criminal responsibility" for "war crimes and crimes against humanity".
Khan also applied for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders - Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (also known as Deif) - for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
