Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center – filed a formal request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday to investigate possible war crime violations committed by Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal. While Meshaal resides in Qatar, he is a citizen of Jordan, which renders him subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
The Jerusalem Post reports that the basis of the request is Meshaal’s culpability for the summary executions carried out by Hamas against Gazans who were accused of helping Israel or protesting Hamas’ actions during Operation Protective Edge.
The NGO bases this accusation on Mashaal’s own reported statements that he has had absolute power over Hamas for at least the last four years. …
The complaint alleges that on August 22, 2014, Hamas “executed 18 so-called ‘collaborators’ who had been convicted of no crime,” including that it “publicly executed seven of these ‘collaborators.'”
The complaint notes that a top Palestinian Authority official called the killings “random” and refers to comments made by Moussa Abu Marzouk, Meshaal’s subordinate, that a number of the killings were carried out “to satisfy the public.”
Previously Shurat Hadin sent a request to Attorney General Eric Holder to ask Turkey to extradite Saleh al-Arouri to the United States. Al-Arouri acknowledged Hamas’ role in the kidnapping of Naftali Fraenkel, an American citizen. Fraenkel was kidnapped and killed along with Eyal Yifrach and Gil-ad Shaar by two members of Hamas.
Editor David Hazony profiled Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the founder of Shurat Hadin, in The Woman who Makes Jihadists Squirm that appeared in the February 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine. The article described one of the problems faced by Shurat Hadin:
Whole national governments across the Middle East were sponsoring groups far more clever, vicious, and well-funded than the KKK. Terrorists lived out there somewhere, in other countries. Could they be really be made to care about anything going on in a courtroom in New York or Tel Aviv?
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