ICC prosecutor seeks warrants for Afghan Taliban leaders on persecution of women

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced Thursday that he had requested arrest warrants for two senior Afghan Taliban officials over repression of women.

Karim Khan said in a statement that he had asked the judges to approve the mandates of the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhunzada, and the head of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, accusing the men of crimes against humanity for gender-based persecution.

“These apps recognize that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community face unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution from the Taliban,” Khan said.

Since regaining control of the country in 2021, the Taliban have Barrot of women in employmentmost public spaces and education beyond sixth grade. Last year, Akhundzada banned buildings from having windows to look out in places where a woman might sit or stand.

No one from the Taliban government was immediately available for comment.

Human rights groups applauded the ICC’s move against the Taliban leadership.

“Their systematic violations of the rights of women and girls, including education bans and the suppression of those who speak out for women’s rights, have accelerated with complete impunity. With no justice in sight in Afghanistan, warrant requests provide a critical path toward some measure of accountability,” Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

This is the first time in the Court’s history that attacks against the LGBTQ+ community have been considered a crime against humanity.

Judges at the La Hugue-based court approved a request in 2022 to the prosecutor to Reopen Afghanistan investigation. The probe was halted after Kabul said it could handle the investigation.

Khan said he wanted to reopen the investigation because under the Taliban there was no longer any prospect of “genuine and effective domestic investigations” in Afghanistan.

However, human rights groups have criticized Khan’s decision to focus on crimes committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State group’s Afghan affiliate. He said he would “prioritize” other aspects of the investigation, such as crimes committed by the Americans.

Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, won approval in 2020 to begin examining offenses allegedly committed by Afghan government forces, the Taliban, American troops and American foreign intelligence agents Dating from 2002.

The decision to vet Americans led the previous Trump administration to slap sanctions on Bensouda, whose term ended in 2021.

There is no deadline for judges to decide on a warrant request, but a decision typically takes about four months. It took a chamber three weeks before trial to issue an arrest mandate for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 but six months in the case of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year.