Israeli hostage families seek justice with war crimes complaint against Hamas
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/14/middleeast/israeli-hostage-families-war-crimes-complaint-intl
Representatives of families of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 hold a press conference after submitting legal filings to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on February 14.
About 100 family members of Israeli hostages, including two former hostages, arrived in the Dutch city of The Hague on Wednesday to file a legal complaint against Hamas at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The complaint, spearheaded by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, calls for the ICC to prosecute Hamas’s leaders for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the killing, kidnapping and sexual violence carried out during the October 7 terrorist attack.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan is already investigating potential war crimes committed by both Hamas and Israel since October 7, but has yet to file any charges.
Aboard El Al flight 131 – named for the number of days the hostages have spent in captivity – family members told CNN about their desire to hold Hamas accountable for the crimes committed against their families as well as how they hope to continue building public pressure to secure a deal to free their loved ones from captivity.
“We hope that prosecutor Karim Khan will help us to achieve justice,” said Hagit Chen, the mother of Itay Chen, a 20-year-old Israeli soldier who is also a US citizen. “I need my kid back home. So we hope to get the justice and also that the world will help us to get justice. This situation cannot go on anymore.”
Better way to handle it than blocking aid, starving innocent civilians. The ICC has been investigating Hamas (and Israel) since 2021 for the events in the Hamas-Israel conflict in 2014 that led to another round of bombing of Gaza.
Goodluck, the ICC seems kinda pointless and since Israel hasn't ratified the ICC they have been unable to investigate much on the ground...
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-kc-cairo-situation-state-palestine-and-israel (Oct 30 2023)
And one can't watch videos of innocent Israelis being hunted down on a Saturday morning at a party and not pause to think for a moment at the hatred and the cruelty that underpinned those attacks. These acts that we saw on the 7th of October are not acts that accord with our humanity. They are acts that are repugnant to any person that believes in God. They're the most un-Islamic acts and cannot be committed in the name of a religion whose very name is peace.
As I stated five days after the attacks that took place on the 7th of October, we have jurisdiction over crimes committed by the nationals of state parties. And therefore that jurisdiction continues over any Rome Statute crimes committed by Palestinian nationals or the nationals of any state parties on Israeli territory, if that is proven. And whilst Israel is not a member of the ICC, I stand ready to work with state parties and non-state parties alike in pursuit of accountability. My primary and indeed my only objective must be to achieve justice for the victims and to uphold my own solemn declaration under the Rome Statute as an independent prosecutor, impartially looking at the evidence and vindicating the rights of victims whether they are in Israel or Palestine.
Since the 7th of October, I really intensified my efforts to get in and access the locations where crimes were committed in Israel, to meet the families of those that are grieving, those that are living with fear, as if time has stood still at an acutely painful moment, waiting for their loved ones, worried, where are those hostages that were taken and praying for their return? And I've similarly made every effort to enter Gaza, but it has not been possible. In Gaza, I wanted to meet those who are suffering such tremendous pain, to hear their experiences firsthand, and very importantly, to promise to them, to give a commitment to them, that their birthright is justice. They own justice and they deserve justice as much as any other of God's creation deserves justice.
