The families of nine Israeli victims of last month’s Hamas attacks have filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on suspicion of war crimes, the lawyer defending them said on Friday.
The families also want Hamas to be prosecuted for genocide and for the ICC to issue an international arrest warrant for its leaders, lawyer François Zimeray said in a statement.
On October 7, Hamas carried out bloody attacks that, according to Israeli authorities, killed more than 1,400 people.
“The complaint concerns the victims, who were all civilians,” Zimeray said, adding that some of them were at the “Tribe of Nova” music festival.
“The complaint states that Hamas terrorists do not deny the committed crimes, which they have documented and widely disseminated, and that the… facts cannot therefore be disputed,” he stressed.
In an interview with France’s Radio Classique, Zimeray said he was always cautious about “excessive qualifications” of events. But the lawyer and his legal team determined that the “genocide” charge “is tenable under the law.”
Any person or group can bring a case to the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, but it is up to the public prosecutor to initiate an investigation.
Contacted AFP, the court could not immediately comment on whether it had received the documentation.
Founded in 2002, the ICC investigates and prosecutes serious crimes around the world.
In 2021, it opened an investigation into Israel, as well as Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, for possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories. His prosecutor, Karim Khan, said any suspected war crimes in the ongoing conflict would fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC. However, ICC teams were unable to enter Gaza and Israel, which is not a member of the ICC.
Source: DN
