Amal Clooney, wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney, and renowned human rights lawyer provided an “expert report” supporting the ICC’s arrest warrant application for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three senior Hamas officials, she said in a statement.
Published on the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s website, the statement said that Clooney joined a panel of international legal experts to evaluate evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza.
“The Panel and its academic advisers are experts in international law, including international humanitarian law and international criminal law,” she explained.
“Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous. We have unanimously determined that the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals.”
“We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination,” she continued.
Explaining her reason for agreeing to take on this role when she was approached by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan four months ago, Clooney explained: “As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law.”
“I hope that justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much.”
Clooney, who is of Lebanese origins, has faced months of criticism of failing to speak out against Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza which has killed more than 35,500 Palestinians to date.
READ: What happens after ICC Prosecutor seeks warrants in Israel-Gaza conflict?