By Enyichukwu Enemanna
British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer on Friday said UK will comply with the arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and that he could be arrested if he travels to the UK.
Heritage Times HT reports that the ICC had on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and ex-defence minister Yoav Gallant in response to accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes against the duo.
This is in connection with Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, triggered by an attack on Israeli territory by the Palestinian militant group in which several persons were killed and others abducted.
Prime Minister Starmer’s spokesman declined to answer questions specifically on whether UK police would detain Netanyahu, telling reporters he would not “get into hypotheticals in relation to individual cases”.
But he added: “The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law”.
Britain is a signatory to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the ICC, in 1998 and ratified it three years later.
The UK’s ICC Act 2001 stipulates that when a government minister receives a request from the ICC for the arrest of an indictee they “shall transmit the request and the documents accompanying it” to an appropriate court.
“If the request is accompanied by a warrant of arrest and the appropriate judicial officer is satisfied that the warrant appears to have been issued by the ICC, he shall endorse the warrant for execution in the United Kingdom,” the act adds.
Officials say the act has not been implemented before, because someone charged by the ICC has never visited Britain.
It is not clear whether the UK court process begins after the ICC issues the arrest or once the indicted person lands on British soil.
“We would obviously fulfil our obligations under the act,” added Starmer’s spokesman.
Israel has denied the allegation its forces are committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, in retaliation to the Oct 7, 2023 attack.
In response to the arrest warrant, Netanyahu said in a video that it was a “dark day in the history of humanity”, and that the ICC has become “the enemy of humanity.
“It’s an antisemitic step that has one goal – to deter me, to deter us from having our natural right to defend ourselves against enemies who try to destroy us,” he said.
Gallant said the court’s decision “places the State of Israel and the murderous leaders of Hamas in the same row and thus legitimises the murder of babies, the rape of women and the abduction of the elderly from their beds”.
