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crimes against humanity
International Legal Coalition Launched to 'Pursue Israeli War Crimes Suspects'
"Under international law, states have a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes, yet these obligations have been systematically neglected," one of the initiative's founders lamented.
Mar 19, 2025
Lawyers from half a dozen countries on Tuesday launched a coalition dedicated to bringing Israelis and dual nationals accused of war crimes in Palestine to justice.
The U.K.-based International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) hosted a launch event in London for the new initiative, called Global 195. ICJP said lawyers will "pursue Israeli war crimes suspects across the world" via arrest warrant applications and the initiation of legal proceedings including private prosecutions against implicated members and veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as well as "figures spanning the entire Israeli military and political chain of command, from senior policymakers to operational personnel, who are directly or indirectly responsible for violations of international law."
Participants include attorneys from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Malaysia, Norway, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, where "advanced preparations have already been made to pursue legal action against British citizens suspected of joining the IDF or committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank."
For the past 18 months, ICJP has been collecting evidence as part of its Justice for Gaza campaign, including 135 eyewitness testimonies backed by open-source intelligence. Documented violations of international law include indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing of civilians, attacks on designated "safe zones,"s airstrikes targeting refugee camps, use of starvation as a weapon of war, and forced displacement.
"The obstruction of international legal institutions in pursuing individuals responsible for war crimes in Palestine, coupled with the failure of national police forces to fulfill their obligations under humanitarian law and universal jurisdiction principles, has allowed impunity for Israeli suspected war criminals to persist," ICJP director Tayab Ali said in a statement.
"Under international law, states have a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes, yet these obligations have been systematically neglected," Ali added. "The launch of Global 195 is a necessary legal intervention to remedy this failure. By activating domestic legal mechanisms across multiple jurisdictions, we are ensuring that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza are subject to legal accountability and no longer have anywhere to hide."
Huseyin Disli, vice president of the Worldwide Lawyers Association, noted that "no domestic court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli genocide war criminals, exposing the failure of the international legal order" and called the global legal community "incoherent in its goals."
Israel is currently the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case filed by South Africa, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last November issued arrest warrants over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. However, key nations including the United States—which has not ratified the Rome Statute upon which the ICC is based—have ignored the warrants, and last month the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the tribunal.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. On Tuesday, Israel unilaterally abandoned an eight-week cease-fire and resumed its assault on Gaza, killing more than 400 people including at least 174 children in airstrikes that wiped out entire families.
United Nations experts, international jurists, human rights groups, and others have found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, as well as crimes including indiscriminate and disproportionate killing of civilians, extrajudicial killing, torture, sexual violence including rape, use of starvation as a weapon of war, and forced displacement.
The launch of Global 195 follows the establishment last September of the
Hind Rajab Foundation, a Belgium-based legal group that pursues arrest warrants for alleged Israeli war criminals traveling abroad. The organization is named after a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed—along with six relatives—by Israeli forces in January 2024 while trying to flee to safety in a car. Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed.
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'Now Do Netanyahu': Philippines' Duterte Arrested Under ICC Warrant for Crimes Against Humanity
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant... shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice," said one human rights advocate.
Mar 11, 2025
On Tuesday, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by local authorities at Manila's international airport after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity. News of his arrest prompted some observers to urge the arrest of another public figure who faces ICC charges: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Duterte case will pose a test for the court, according to The New York Times. In the past six months, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military junta in Myanmar.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote "Perhaps Netanyahu and Gallant will be next..." in response to the news. Danny Shaw, a professor at City University of New York, posted a video of Duterte's arrest and wrote: "Why don't they arrest Netanyahu?"
Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader at the Dutch peace organization PAX, wrote, "now do Netanyahu."
On Tuesday night, Duterte was placed on a plane that was bound for The Hague, where the court is headquartered, per the Times, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The ICC has accused Duterte of crimes against humanity during his time as president and when he was the mayor of the city of Davao. During his tenure as president, from 2016 to 2022, Duterte's security forces carried out thousands of killings that his government cast as drug-related cases. In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch described his "war on drugs" as effectively "a campaign of extrajudicial execution in impoverished areas of Manila and other urban areas." Philippine National Police officers and unidentified "vigilantes" killed over 7,000 people between the start of his term and the release of that Human Rights Watch report, according to the group.
In 2017, Duterte earned praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, who told him in a phone call that he was doing "an unbelievable job on the drug problem," according to reporting at the time.
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant is a hopeful sign for victims in the Philippines and beyond. It shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice, wherever they are in the world," said Agnes Callamard, secretary general of the human rights group Amnesty International, in a statement Tuesday. "At a time when too many governments renege on their ICC obligations while others attack or sanction international courts, Duterte's arrest is a huge moment for the power of international law."
Duterte's former chief legal counsel and presidential spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, said that the "ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines," in part because "the country withdrew as an ICC member state in 2018," according to a post on social media.
According to the Times, the court says the case only considers alleged crimes from the time when the country was still part of the court.
According to a copy of he warrant, which was obtained by the Times, three judges of the ICC said they believed Duterte "was responsible for the drug war killings that took place when he was president and mayor of Davao, and that there were reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were 'both widespread and systematic.'"
The government itself, in 2022, said that over 6,200 "drug suspects" were killed during Duterte's war on drugs starting in 2016. Rights groups put the total number of people who died much higher, in the tens of thousands, according to PBS.
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Rights Group Urges ICC to Probe Biden for 'Aiding and Abetting' Israeli Crimes in Gaza
A veteran war crimes lawyer argues that "there are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes."
Feb 24, 2025
A human rights group revealed Monday that on the last full day of U.S. President Joe Biden's term, it encouraged the International Criminal Court to investigate him and two of his Cabinet members for "aiding and abetting" Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
U.S.-based Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) announced that on January 19, it submitted to the ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan a 172-page communication detailing why the tribunal should probe Biden and his former secretaries of defense and state, Lloyd Austin and Anthony Blinken.
Although a fragile cease-fire took effect in Gaza last month, Israel—backed by the Biden administration and Congress—responded to the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack with a 15-month blockade and military assault that killed tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Palestinians and left the territory in ruins.
"There are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel's crimes," DAWN board member and veteran war crimes lawyer Reed Brody said in a Monday statement. "The bombs dropped on Palestinian hospitals, schools, and homes are American bombs, the campaign of murder and persecution has been carried out with American support. U.S. officials have been aware of exactly what Israel is doing, and yet their support never stopped."
"By investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN's document lays out how the United States, under Biden, "provided unwavering direct military and political support to Israel, even after it became manifest that Israel continued to carry out severe violations of international humanitarian law and human rights." That includes at least $17.9 billion in taxpayer-funded military assistance since October 2023, a 381% increase from the around $3.8 billion a year before Hamas' attack.
"In addition to new arms transfers and sales authorizations, the U.S. used pre-existing contracts and additional emergency military aid measures to expedite the delivery of major arms," the submission continues, also noting "the deployment of U.S.-operated military intelligence and active military operations targeting groups posing threats to Israel on other fronts."
Israel—like the United States—is not a party to the Hague-based ICC, but Palestine is. The court in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who is dead.
DAWN's submission makes the case that "by continuously and unconditionally providing political support and military
support to Israel while being fully aware of the specific crimes committed by Netanyahu, Gallant, and their subordinates, President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Secretary Austin contributed intentionally to the commission of those crimes while at least knowing the intention of the group to commit the Israeli crimes, if not aiming of furthering such criminal activity."
The group's executive director, Sarah Leah Whitson, said Monday that "not only did Biden, Blinken, and Secretary Austin ignore and justify the overwhelming evidence of Israel's grotesque and deliberate crimes, overruling their own staff recommendations to halt weapons transfers to Israel, they doubled down by providing Israel with unconditional military and political support to ensure it could carry out its atrocities."
"They provided Israel with not only essential military support but equally essential political support by vetoing multiple cease-fire resolutions at the U.N. Security Council to ensure Israel could continue its crimes," Whitson highlighted. She argued that "by investigating and prosecuting U.S. officials, the ICC can deter and discourage further international support for Israeli crimes in Gaza and demonstrate that no one is above the law."
DAWN also recommended that the ICC consider looking into half a dozen other Biden officials including Jake Sullivan, national security adviser; Gina Raimondo, secretary of commerce; Bonnie Jenkins, under secretary of arms control and international security; Stanley L. Brown, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs; Amanda Dory, acting under secretary of defense for policy; and Mike Miller, acting director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
"It is important for the international community, and Palestinians in particular, to know that the American people do not support the crimes their elected officials committed in Palestine and that American organizations are doing their part to hold these officials accountable," said Whitson. "We have a duty, not just a right, as American civil society, to exercise our free speech to serve truth and seek justice."
So far, efforts to hold Biden and other U.S. leaders accountable for enabling what many experts around the world have called Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza via the U.S. court system have been unsuccessful. That includes a December lawsuit against Blinken backed by DAWN—which was founded by assassinated Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"We have tried every available avenue within the U.S. to stop our government's complicity in the outrageous crimes we've witnessed since October 2023 in Gaza," said Raed Jarrar, DAWN's advocacy director. "When domestic institutions fail to uphold black-letter laws prohibiting military support to commit war crimes, we have a particular responsibility as Americans to hold American officials accountable for their roles in those crimes."
Since Biden left office last month, U.S. President Donald Trump has already welcomed Netanyahu to the White House, responded to the warrants by targeting the ICC with sanctions, and promoted a U.S. takeover of Gaza that would involve ethnically cleansing the territory of Palestinians.
"Trump isn't just obstructing justice; he's trying to burn down the courthouse to prevent anyone from holding Israeli criminals accountable," said Jarrar. "His plan to forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza should also merit ICC investigation—not just for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes but for ordering forcible transfer, a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute."
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