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US pressuring new UK government to uphold legal challenge to ICC arrest warrants

July 11, 2024 at 7:35 pm

A general view of the International Criminal Court (ICC) building in The Hague, Netherlands on April 30, 2024. [Selman Aksünger – Anadolu Agency]

The United States is reportedly pressuring the United Kingdom’s new Labour government to maintain a legal challenge over the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) pursuit of an arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister over war crimes in Gaza.

Back in May this year, the UK’s previous government under Conservative party leader and Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, challenged the ICC on its efforts to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, arguing that the institution has no jurisdiction over war crimes committed by Israeli forces in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Now, after the UK general election and the voting in of the new Labour government under Prime Minister Kier Starmer, the ICC has given White Hall until 26 July to decide whether to pursue that same legal challenge. Meanwhile, other states and interested parties have been given until tomorrow to make their own decision.

In an article published by British newspaper, the Guardian, yesterday, prominent human rights barrister, Geoffrey Robertson, stated that the US is trying to pressure the UK into maintaining that legal challenge. Calling such a decision “the first big moral mistake” that the new Prime Minister Starmer would potentially make, Robertson stressed that the US is only employing the pressure as it “is not a member of the ICC, and expects the UK to look after its interests there”.

Read: Fearing arrest, Netanyahu could avoid Europe stopover on way to US

The barrister stated that the UK’s argument, which is adopted from Israel, “is that Palestine is precluded from prosecuting Israelis and this means it cannot ‘delegate’ such prosecutions to the ICC. This is wrong because the ICC Prosecutor is in no sense a delegate of Palestine”.

He highlighted that the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, KC, “is an independent Prosecutor who has collected evidence that he will bring to the Court to ask it to issue an arrest warrant. He has no connection with Palestinian authorities.”

Robertson further argued that if Israel’s and the UK’s argument is correct, then “there would be nothing to stop the Israel Defence Forces lining up Palestinian children and executing them point-blank. There would be no accountability for any crime against humanity they might commit.”

According to the Guardian, Labour officials informed it over the weekend that the party and its government had rejected the Conservatives’ legal challenge while they were in opposition, and assured that the party would maintain that policy when in power. The officials reportedly refrained from mentioning whether that claim would be withdrawn, however.

Read: Legal experts debunk Israeli, US claims challenging ICC jurisdiction