The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said yesterday he was seeking arrest warrants for the head of the Taliban, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, and Afghanistan’s chief justice for their “unprecedented” persecution of women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ+ community, in the country. (New York Times)
Earlier this week, Italian police detained Osama Elmasry Njeem, the director of several infamous prisons in Libya, under an arrest warrant from the ICC, which suspects him of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Two days after his arrest on Sunday, though, Italy released Njeem and escorted him back to Libya, a move the ICC has denounced. (Reuters)
Our Take
The ICC’s request for arrest warrants against the Taliban leaders comes after a yearslong campaign by human rights activists calling for recognition of “gender apartheid” as a crime under the court’s jurisdiction. Though Khan’s statement requesting the warrants doesn’t use that term specifically, it is the first time that an ICC case has been built specifically around gender persecution, which is listed as a crime against humanity in the Rome Statute that established the ICC’s jurisdiction.