French ‘legal maestro’ behind ICC arrest warrants passes away

French lawyer and Doctor of Law Gilles Devers passed away on Tuesday. The “champion of Palestinian justice” was 68.

Devers is regarded to have been the legal “maestro” behind the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last week against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was in great pain due to illness, but on the day that the warrants were issued, he told his son, “Now I can die in peace.” Despite the pain, he insisted on speaking to the media about this exceptional legal victory and gave his last statements on the issue to Al Jazeera.

For 30 years, Gilles Devers divided his work between the health and social sectors and the defence of minorities in France and around the world. The Palestinian cause was his first priority, though, and he was one of the spokesmen for a group of 350 NGOs, represented by 40 lawyers, handling a lawsuit filed at the ICC regarding war crimes committed during the 2008-2009 Israel military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza. He was commissioned by the Palestinian Authority to file a complaint on its behalf in January 2009.

The French lawyer also filed a complaint against Israel in July 2014 regarding its war on Gaza that same year, which led to a major media campaign and put pressure on the PA and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This resulted in Palestine joining the Rome Statute, and the ICC agreeing to open a preliminary examination of the facts that took place as of 13 June, 2014.

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French expert in international law Abdelmajid Merari described him as a “humanitarian and principled lawyer” who dedicated his life to defending humanitarian issues, most notably the Palestinian cause. Merari told Al Jazeera Net that he learned a lot from him. “He was my mentor in several cases for more than 15 years of joint work, and he welcomed differences of opinion with open arms. With his death, we have lost an invaluable legal and human rights figure.”

Despite the obstacles faced by the legal team, and the rejection of the requests he submitted in the ICC file, Devers was distinguished by his insistence on not giving up.

“The chivalry of the Palestinian people,” he said, “is more important than the chivalry of lawyers.”

In this context, Merari — one of the lawyers closest to him — stressed that Devers championed the Palestinian cause before the arrest warrants were issued. “Indeed, [he has done so] since Palestine became a member of the Rome Statute, and when the ruling of 5 February, 2021, was issued confirming the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, he reviewed and helped the ICC experts to draft the wording.”

The events of 7 October, 2023, prompted even more intense action on the Palestinians file by Devers. According to Merari, he was the “dynamo” of the legal team. “He would ask questions when we were slacking off, and he would write hundreds of pages of memos when we were lazy. When it came to this case, he put pressure on the team members to collect evidence, and he worked to coordinate their roles despite all the health problems he was suffering from at the time.” He added that, “Gilles Devers cried at the door of the ICC when a Palestinian lawyer apologised for not attending, because all her family members were killed on the eve of 9 November, when we went to file the lawsuit in court which was the main driver for issuing the arrest warrants.”

Merari told Al Jazeera Net that even as Devers was preparing to undergo “extremely dangerous” surgery — “a matter of life and death” — the last thing he talked about was the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem. Moreover, he was planning to raise at the ICC the issue of Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation state.

His close friend and colleague Merari ended by saying that the arrest warrants issued against Netanyahu and Gallant were “the gift” that Devers sought for more than 15 years. “He left [this world] with a clear conscience, and we will continue our legal battle in the spirit of Gilles Devers and to execute his will because the real and most difficult work actually began after the warrants were issued.”

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