The complaint calls for sanctions and an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, his Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, and the main leaders of the Israeli armed forces who, in the opinion of the lawyers, “must be held accountable, appear before the ICC, be sanctioned accordingly with the penalties established in the Rome Statute and compensate the victims and their families”.
More than 600 Chilean jurists filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The information was transmitted to the Efe agency by the plaintiffs’ representative, Nelson Hadad, former Chilean ambassador to Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Ecuador.
The complaint, presented on Monday before this international court, based in The Hague (Netherlands), calls for sanctions and an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, his Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, and the main leaders of the Israeli armed forces who, in According to the lawyers, “they must be accountable, appear before the ICC, be sanctioned in accordance with the penalties established in the Rome Statute and compensate the victims and their families”.
During a telephone call from Amsterdam airport, before returning to Chile, Hadad recalled that “inhuman, degrading, cruel and abominable crimes” are being committed in the Gaza Strip, for which “there can be no impunity”.
The accusatory text, with 66 pages, “plausibly demonstrates the practice and existence of these crimes, with the testimonies of many employees who work on the ground in the Gaza Strip and declare that we are facing a devastating situation and a humanitarian tragedy,” he added. Hadad.
He further said that, in his opinion, Israel’s “fundamental and systematic” objective is “the elimination of a people” and “destroy their national identity as a people with the right to exercise self-determination”.
The complaint presented adds to the joint initiative of the Chilean and Mexican governments, which in January presented a text to the ICC with the aim of reinforcing the investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jerusalem- East and Israel.
With around 500,000 people, Chile is one of the main destinations for the Palestinian community outside the Arab world, a migration that began at the end of the 19th century, when hundreds of Palestinians fled, first, from Ottoman rule and, later in the 20th century, from Israeli occupation.
Chile recognized Palestine as a “free, independent and sovereign” state in 2011, during the government of conservative president Sebastián Piñera.
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