DOHA: Qatar has met with the president of the International Criminal Court as it seeks legal action against Israel over its unprecedented strike on its territory last week, an official said on Thursday.
The emirate’s chief negotiator, Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, met in The Hague on Wednesday with the president of the ICC, Judge Tomoko Akane, as it pursues “every available legal and diplomatic avenue to ensure accountability for those responsible for Israel’s attack on Qatar,” the Qatari official told AFP.
Last week’s deadly Israeli strike targeted Qatar-based leaders of Palestinian militant group Hamas and sent shock waves through the Gulf states that have long depended on the United States for their security.
Hamas has said top officials of its political bureau, hosted in Qatar with US blessing since 2012, survived the strike but it said five members were killed, along with an officer of Qatar’s internal security force.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, the official called Israel’s attack “unlawful,” adding it “constitutes grave violations of international humanitarian law.”
Qatar, as an observer state at the ICC, cannot itself refer cases to the court.
But after emergency talks in Doha, the Arab and Islamic blocs called on their members Monday to take “all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions.”
In a post on X after his meeting with the ICC chief, Khulaifi said his visit had been “part of the work of the team tasked with exploring legal avenues to respond to the illegal Israeli armed attack against the State of Qatar.”
Last year, the ICC launched a prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel’s war in Gaza, including by intentionally targeting civilians and using starvation as a method of war.
The ICC also sought the arrest of Israel’s former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, who has since been confirmed killed by Israel.
The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 65,141 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Qatar meets ICC head as it mulls legal action against Israel
https://arab.news/cadej
Qatar meets ICC head as it mulls legal action against Israel
- Last week’s deadly Israeli strike targeted Qatar based leaders of Palestinian militant group Hamas and sent shock waves through the Gulf states that have long depended on the United States for their security
- In a post on X Qatar's chief negotiator Khulaifi said his visit had been “part of the work of the team tasked with exploring legal avenues to respond to the illegal Israeli armed attack against the State of Qatar”
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
