By Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE (Reuters) -The Worldwide Felony Courtroom prosecutor on Thursday stated he had utilized for arrest warrants for Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, together with supreme non secular chief Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of crimes in opposition to humanity for widespread discrimination in opposition to girls and ladies.
An announcement issued by the workplace of chief Prosecutor Karim Khan stated proof collected as a part of investigations offered cheap grounds to imagine that Akhundzada, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, who has served as chief justice since 2021, “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”
They’re “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women,” the assertion stated.
The persecution has taken place from not less than 15 August 2021 till the current day, throughout the territory of Afghanistan and is ongoing, the prosecutor stated.
The Afghanistan probe is likely one of the longest by ICC prosecutors and has been beset by authorized and sensible delays. The preliminary preliminary examination began in 2007 and it was solely in 2022 {that a} full-scale investigation has moved ahead.
Since Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban returned to energy in 2021 it has clamped down on girls’s rights, together with limits to education, work and normal independence in every day life.
