“International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC addresses journalists after visiting the Rafah Border Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on 29 October 2023. From Cairo, the Prosecutor gives a statement on the current situation in Israel and the State of Palestine”.
Video courtesy of Al Arabiya - english.alarabiya.net.
Transcript
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[Ends]#ICC Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC addresses journalists after visiting the Rafah Border Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip on 29 October 2023.
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) October 29, 2023
From Cairo, the Prosecutor gives a statement on the current situation in Israel and the State of Palestine👇https://t.co/666En6yBIT
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan speaks during an interview with Reuters about the violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in The Hague, Netherlands October 12, 2023. (File photo: Reuters)
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan said Sunday preventing access to humanitarian could be a crime, after visiting Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza, the main entry point for international aid.
“Impeding relief supplies as provided by the Geneva conventions may constitute a crime within the court jurisdiction,” Khan told reporters in Cairo.
He said he wanted “to underline clearly to Israel that there must be discernible efforts without further delay to make sure civilians” in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory “receive basic food, medicines”.
“I saw trucks full of goods full of humanitarian assistance stuck where nobody needs them, stuck in Egypt, stuck at Rafah,” Khan said.
“These supplies must get to the civilians of Gaza without delay.”
On Sunday the United Nations warned it feared a breakdown of public order after looting at food aid centres in Gaza run by its agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said the situation was “growing more desperate by the hour” as casualties in the war increase and essential supplies of food, water, medicine and shelter dwindle.
People in the Palestinian territory have lived under Israeli blockade for 16 years and under complete siege for the past three weeks after the territory’s Hamas rulers launched deadly attacks into Israel that sparked a war.
Hamas militants stormed across the Gaza border on October 7 in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 239 others, according to Israeli officials.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli bombardment has killed more than 8,000 people, mainly civilians and half of them children.
Khan said his office had an ongoing investigation into “any crimes committed on the territory of Palestine and any crimes committed, whether it’s by Israel and Palestine or whether it’s acts committed on the territory of Palestine or from Palestine into Israel.”
“This includes current events in Gaza and also current events in the West Bank,” Khan said, adding that he was “very concerned also by the spike of the number of reported incidents of attack by settlers against Palestinian civilians” in the territory Israel has occupied since 1967.
Khan also said hostage taking was a breach of the Geneva Conventions.
“I call for the immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel and for their safe return to their families,” Khan said.
The British lawyer said “Israel has clear obligations in relation to its war with Hamas, not just moral obligations but legal obligations” to comply with the laws of conflict.
“These principles equally apply to Hamas in relation to firing indiscriminate rockets into Israel,” he said.
View original: https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/10/29/ICC-prosecutor-at-Rafah-border-crossing-says-hopes-to-visit-Gaza-Israel
THE International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan KC was at the Rafah crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip this weekend. Watch his remarks on the current situation in Israel and the State of Palestine in this clip filmed outside the compound of the Rafah crossing.
Le Procureur de la #CPI @KarimKhanQC était au point de passage de Rafah entre l'Égypte et la bande de Gaza ce week-end.
— CPI-Cour pĂ©nale int. (@CourPenaleInt) October 30, 2023
Regardez ses remarques sur la situation actuelle en IsraĂ«l et dans l’État de Palestine (en anglais). 👇 pic.twitter.com/WC8rcf71mD
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Statement: 13 July 2023 [here is a full copy]
Statement of ICC Prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan KC, to the United Nations Security Council on the situation in Darfur, pursuant to Resolution 1593 (2005)
Thirty-seventh report: English, Français, عربي
Mr President, thank you for the opportunity that you provided me to brief the Council once again today. And I'd also like to express my gratitude to the Permanent Representative of Sudan for the opportunity that I had yesterday to meet with him as well.
Mr President, Excellencies, it's 90 days now, 90 days from the 15th of April, when fighting erupted between the RSF, the Rapid Support Force, and the Sudanese Armed Forces. And that conflict, that engagement, has spilled out of Khartoum to engulf much of Sudan. Certainly it is felt by the people of Darfur.
And the simple truth is that we are in this Council and in the world, as we see increasing reports, in peril of allowing history to repeat itself: the same miserable history that compelled this Council in 2005 to refer this Darfur situation to the ICC. As we speak, there are women and children, boys and girls, old and young, in fear of their lives, living with uncertainty in the midst of conflict. And as their homes are burnt, many as we speak will not know what the night will bring and what fate awaits them tomorrow.
This is not hyperbole or polemics. It's the result of an objective assessment from myriad sources. Just today, Mr President, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report which detailed allegations concerning the killing of 87 ethnic Masalit, allegedly by the RSF and members of their allied militia in West Darfur. We are investigating those allegations.
We are, by any analysis, not on the precipice of a human catastrophe but in the very mists of one. It is occurring.
And it's my analysis and my prayer and advice that we must act urgently, collectively to protect the most vulnerable. If this oft repeated phrase of “never again” is to mean anything, it must mean something here and now for the people of Darfur that have lived with this uncertainty and pain and the scars of conflict for almost two decades.
With respect to the role of my Office, I do wish to be very clear that our mandate pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1593 is ongoing with respect of crimes within our jurisdiction: the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. And any individual who is found to be committing those crimes within our jurisdictions will be investigated. And depending upon assessments by the independent judges of the ICC, we will strain every sinew and leave no stone unturned to ensure that they are held accountable in fair and independent trials.
We have already started investigating, as I said. And Mr President and Excellencies, I do want to be clear and send a clear message to every belligerent, every commander, every foot soldier who has a gun or believes that they have power to do what they want. That targeting civilians, individuals, targeting their homes, targeting their businesses, intentionally, particularly targeting children and women, are crimes prohibited by the Rome Statute. Attacks against schools, against humanitarian supplies, against humanitarian facilities must cease because the harm that these types of activities are causing are so profound, they go beyond words. And I think that reality deserves us to pause for thought and contemplate the lot of those who are not in rooms or in chambers like this.
This is a moment really, Mr President, where we should really converge the Charter principles, the principles hard won at Nuremberg, the Rome Statute obligations and your own authority as a Council that in 2005 made a determination that these acts represented a threat to international peace and security.
And it applies not only in relation to acts committed in Sudan. Any individual that aids and abets, encourages or directs from outside Sudan, crimes that may be committed in Darfur will also be investigated.
This is a moment that really should cause some clarity in terms of where this is going, in terms of the legal options available, but also in terms of the moral responsibility and the legal responsibilities that we owe to people that feel invisible, that have felt invisible for almost 20 years, and who feel that the law and the pronouncements and resolutions from this Council are not taken seriously, and are not delivered to protect them, to be a shield for them as the Charter requires.
The investigations that we're looking at encompass also many allegations in West Darfur: looting and judicial killings, extrajudicial killings, burnings of homes, and also allegations in North Darfur.
Now, these allegations I've already mentioned, Your Excellencies, the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights today, but this also emerges from other sources, such as the UNITAMS report - and I take the opportunity of commending the excellent leadership, the cooperation of Volker Perthes, the SRSG, for their cooperation over this last period.
I've given clear instructions to my Office to prioritise crimes against children and crimes of sexual and gender based violence. And the various reports that we've received, I can't vouch at this juncture for their accuracy. But we are already looking at new, imaginative, innovative ways to verify what is the truth, to subject it to scrutiny. And I've said that during my term as Prosecutor, I will not apply for warrants unless there's a realistic prospect of conviction. But we will ensure, God willing, that justice is not only spoken about in this chamber, but it’s felt to vindicate the rights of civilians and the vulnerable in ways that they have not seen sufficiently in their lived experiences.
Today I can also announce a new public campaign that we've launched, asking and encouraging civilians, members of the different groups, any individual with information to provide it to my Office in a secure channel using the portal that we have set up.
In this critical moment - and I think by any analysis that's the most bland statement we can say - in this critical moment, we need a very honest assessment. This outcome has been staring us in the face. It's been staring this Council in the face. It's been staring Sudan in the face for an awfully long time.
We could see it coming. The question is what we're going to do about it.
This reality, the fact that children are rendered orphans, or women are violated, and buildings are burnt, is the result of an unwillingness over a significant period, despite the reports that myself and predecessors have brought before the Council, despite the work of the Office of the High Commissioner, despite the work of different UN organisations and UNITAMS in the more recent past, we haven't given value to the accounts of the lived experiences of so many of our brothers and sisters who are Sudanese and who are Darfuri.
It stems in my respectful view from a fundamental failure to recognise that justice isn't simply required for upholding normative values and principles of public international law, not even to vindicate essential principles of the Charter, but for all those reasons, all those instruments speak to a fundamental reality that justice has to be and is a foundation for any prospect of sustainable peace and real security and stability.
It reflects, Mr President, a fundamental disregard and breach of clear, repeated commitments that have been made to the people of Sudan by their governments. And one can go through a whole litany of instruments and promises made but one can simply limit it to two: the unfulfilled Juba peace agreement of 3 October 2020, and the commitments made to myself, to my Office by the government of Sudan by dint of the Memorandum of Understanding signed on 12 August 2021.
And this compels my Office to look how it can more effectively render justice at this moment in a way that we will not allow any errors of the past, any obstruction, any non-cooperation to sabotage the prospects of justice or to sabotage or render impotent the will of this Council with the heavy responsibilities that are placed in you.
By any measure, a failure to meet international legal obligations and the absence of any meaningful justice in Sudan for the serious crimes committed in Darfur 20 years ago, have sown the seeds to the weeds of woe that is the now the misfortune of so many Darfuris.
Now, I remain open to engage with all actors to prevent further backsliding into ever deeper violence. I've tried over the last months to engage and we've got messages to the leadership of the different armed groups and government of Sudan and the RSF and I continue to make efforts.
But any engagement has two key conditions. It's essential that those involved in hostilities recognise, however late in the day, however late in the day, that they have to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law. There cannot be further excuses and prevarications and justifications for what is intolerable and unjustified and targeting the very, the most vulnerable people of humanity. And it's essential that those involved in hostilities extend genuine communication and genuine meaningful cooperation with my Office, both in relation to the current hostilities that we're investigating and also in respect to the previous crimes committed in Darfur. And we will be redoubling efforts to make sure that we can penetrate any obstruction that we face.
I think as the sky darkens over Darfur and in fact the people of Sudan, we must hold onto the light that justice can bring. Not because of some blind hope or blind faith but steered by determination, focus, and a decision. A decision to change things that we've seen in the past.
And there has been hope. In the last six months tremendous progress has been made in the ICC case regarding Ali Kushayb (Mr Abd-Al-Rahman), and we've closed our case after presenting 81 witnesses that have been tested by the defence and have been heard by the judges of the ICC.
That's a key milestone. And I would like to take the opportunity to commend my team, the men and women in my Office that have persevered in very difficult circumstances to discharge their responsibility with honour and with integrity and in an extraordinarily efficient manner.
And the voice of victims has been heard. Recently, victims called by the legal representatives of the victims have been heard before the Court, and they have been yearning for 20 years for an opportunity to present their views.
And one example, if I may, is worth repeating because it speaks both to their misery of the last 20 years, but also it speaks to what is befalling them now. And the words of one witness, I will repeat with your permission.
And I quote, he said: “I would like to say that we like justice and we want justice. We want that all those who turned our lives into humiliation and suffering and exhaustion to be held accountable. We want those who destroyed us to be held accountable. These people destroyed our future and the future of our generations. And in this moment, I am presenting to you my voice and the voice of all Darfurian refugees present everywhere around the world. And I would like to tell you that we want peace. We want to return to our homeland. It's enough now.”
Mr President, how could anybody be more eloquent, sincere, and simple than that individual who spoke understandable truths? He is right: it is enough now by any benchmark and by any metric.
And the power of that testimony, its tragic relevance today, underlines the fact that the trial of Mr Abd-Al-Rahman, despite all the difficulties, continues to make progress despite the current increased hostilities. And I'm pleased that because of the excellent trial management by the judges of the ICC, this has been the most effective, the most efficient trial in the history of the Court.
But we've got to make sure that it can come to a conclusion. And I call upon the government of Sudan to join me, to provide every assistance to the defence, every assistance to the legal representatives of the victims, every assistance to the Court so that that trial can come to a final determination after an assessment by the judges of the ICC.
But we need to show that we're delivering more than words and promises. We need to show demonstrable action. And I've said: this is going to be determined not only by the potency and the effectiveness of investigations, not even by the issuance of arrest warrants if judges of the ICC scrutinise any applications we present and are compelled to issue those warrants. But we need to see actual justice in court to separate truth from fiction and to give confidence to the people of Darfur that their lives mean something at all and that what took place is going to be justiciable.
I have said, Mr. President, repeatedly to this Council, that I do not want these Security Council referrals to be never-ending stories. I have tried to engage with the government of Sudan with roadmaps, with different options to make sure that justice in any forum is delivered in a way that can satisfy the objectives of the Council and the demands of justice.
But if authors are intent on writing further chapters of despair, further pages of misery, we will not close this book. We will keep reading, and we will ensure to the best of our ability that there is justice, that there is accountability. Because if we fail to deliver here, I think the implications are very severe. As we see in other situations, it calls into question the relevance of this Council.
And I make no apology, Mr President, when I make my final remark. Many actors in this conflict - and I'm a Muslim - many actors in this conflict on both parties proclaim to be Muslims. I recall not only their responsibilities under the Charter, their responsibilities under Resolution 1593, their commitments by Juba, their commitments in the MoU they signed, but also in terms of the religion that they profess to uphold, which is Islam.
And the Holy Quran, Surah An-Nisa, which is Chapter 4, Verse 135, makes it clear, and I quote: “Be upholders of justice and witnesses of truth, even though it be against yourselves or against your parents, or be it against rich or poor. If you distort justice, God Allah Ta'ala, knows that which you do.”
There has to be a day of reckoning in this world. And this is another reason why I encourage each and every person, however high in any party to a conflict, or any civilian, to speak the truth and avail themselves of the opportunity now to take the hand of justice and allow there to be some accountability that has been often promised and has not been delivered by the government of Sudan. I think only if we work in that way of humility will we vindicate the promises we've been making now since 2005.
Thank you so much.
For further details on "preliminary examinations" and "situations and cases" before the Court, click here, and here.
Source: Office of the Prosecutor | Contact: OTPNewsDesk@icc-cpi.int
View original: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-kc-united-nations-security-council-situation-darfur-0
The International Criminal Court prosecutor says he is investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western Darfur region during the current conflict that has killed and displaced thousands.
Read more in a report at The Independent
Published Thursday 13 July 2023 - here is the rest of the copy:
ICC prosecutor says he is investigating alleged new war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region
The International Criminal Court prosecutor said Thursday he is investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's western Darfur region during the current conflict that has killed and displaced thousands.
Karim Khan told the U.N. Security Council that fighting between government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Security Forces has spilled into Darfur where war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed back in 2003. He said the country is now “in peril of allowing history to repeat itself,” Khan said.
In 2005, the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC and Khan said the court’ still has a mandate under that measure to investigate crimes. He said people in the vast region are living in fear of their lives, in the middle of conflict and with their homes burning.
View original: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/darfur-ap-sudan-united-nations-icc-b2374974.html
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Further reading
Report at The Telegraph
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press
Published Thursday 13 July 2023; Updated 4:27 p.m. - here is a full copy:
ICC prosecutor says he is investigating alleged new war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region
Karim Khan, Prosecutor of International Criminal Court, addresses a Security Council meeting on the situation in Sudan, Thursday, July 13, 2023, at United Nations headquarters.Mary Altaffer/AP
.jpeg)
Sudanese Ambassador to the United Nations Al-Harith Idriss Al-Harith Mohamed, third from right bottom, listens as Karim Khan, third from right top, Prosecutor of International Criminal Court, addresses a Security Council meeting on the situation in Sudan, Thursday, July 13, 2023, at United Nations headquarters.Mary Altaffer/AP
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The International Criminal Court's prosecutor said Thursday he is investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region during the country's current conflict that has killed more than 3,000 people and forced over 3 million to flee their homes.
Karim Khan told the U.N. Security Council that fighting between government forces and the paramilitary Rapid Security Forces has spilled into Darfur which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003. He said the world, the country and the council are “in peril of allowing history to repeat itself.”
In 2005, the Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC, and Khan said the court still has a mandate under that resolution to investigate crimes in the vast western region.
Darfur has been one of the epicenters of the current conflict that began on April 15, turning into an arena of ethnic violence with the paramilitary troops and allied Arab militias attacking African ethnic groups. Earlier Thursday, the U.N. human rights office said at least 87 bodies – some of them from the ethnic African Masalit tribe – were uncovered in a mass grave in West Darfur, and cited “credible information” that they were killed by Rapid Support Force fighters and an allied militia.
“We are investigating those allegations,” Khan told the council. “We are by any analysis not on the precipice of a human catastrophe but in the very midst of one.”
“There are women and children, boys and girls, old and young, in fear of their lives, living with uncertainty in the midst of conflict, and as their homes are burnt. Many as we speak will not know what the night will bring and what fate awaits them tomorrow,” the prosecutor said.
Khan said the ICC is also looking to investigate many other allegations in West Darfur including looting, extrajudicial killings and the burning of homes, as well as allegations in North Darfur.
He said anybody inside or outside Sudan who aids or abets crimes in Darfur will be investigated.
And he said he instructed his office to give priority to crimes against children and sexual- and gender-based violence.
“We must act urgently, collectively, to protect the most vulnerable if this oft-repeated phrase of `never again' is to mean anything,” Khan said.
The vast Darfur region was engulfed in bloodshed in 2003 when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency accusing the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum of discrimination and neglect.
The government, under then President Omar al-Bashir, responded with a scorched-earth assault of aerial bombings and unleashed local nomadic Arab militias known as the Janjaweed, who are accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to [SW Ed: allegedly] 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.
In April, the first ICC trial to deal with atrocities by Sudanese government-backed forces in Darfur began in The Hague, Netherlands. The defendant, Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, pleaded innocent to all 31 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Khan told the council the prosecution has closed its case and the trial is expected to continue, notwithstanding the ongoing conflict.
He quoted one unnamed witness who told the court that after 20 years: “We want justice. We want that all those who turned our lives into humiliation and suffering and exhaustion to be held accountable ... We want peace. We want to return to our homeland.”
Al-Bashir also faces ICC charges of genocide and crimes against humanity related to the Darfur conflict. He had been in prison in Khartoum since he was ousted from power in 2019 with two other sought by the ICC.
In a report to the council, Khan said his office understands that the three suspects were released from Kober prison in the capital Khartoum after fighting broke out in April. He said his office recently sent a letter to the government seeking confirmation of their current location.
Khan briefed the Security Council soon after leaders from Sudan’s seven neighboring countries met in Cairo on Thursday for the most high-profile peace talks since conflict erupted across the northeastern African country 90 days ago.
The 12 weeks of fighting have turned Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, into an urban battlefield.
The conflict forced more than 2.4 million people to flee their homes for safer areas inside the country, according to the International Organization for Migration. Around 738,000 others have crossed into neighboring countries, the agency said.
Written By
EDITH M. LEDERER
View original: https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/world/article/icc-prosecutor-says-he-is-investigating-alleged-18199528.php
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