{"id":44507,"date":"2024-11-28T06:41:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T06:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=44507"},"modified":"2024-11-28T06:41:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T06:41:14","slug":"france-says-netanyahu-is-immune-from-icc-warrant-as-israel-is-not-member-of-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/11\/28\/france-says-netanyahu-is-immune-from-icc-warrant-as-israel-is-not-member-of-court\/","title":{"rendered":"France says Netanyahu is immune from ICC warrant as Israel is not member of court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The French government has claimed that\u00a0Benjamin Netanyahu\u00a0has immunity from arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court for war crimes on the grounds that Israel is not an ICC member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The claim came soon after Netanyahu\u2019s cabinet agreed to a French-backed ceasefire in Lebanon and is in contrast to Paris\u2019s attitude towards last year\u2019s\u00a0ICC war crimes warrant issued against Vladimir Putin,\u00a0another leader of a non-member country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After\u00a0the court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu\u00a0and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on Friday, France initially signalled that it would fulfil its obligations as a signatory to the Rome statute, the ICC\u2019s founding document, if either visited the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, on Wednesday, the French foreign ministry appeared to change its tone and claimed Netanyahu had immunity because\u00a0Israel\u00a0was not signatory to the statute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA state cannot be held to act in a way that is incompatible with its obligations in terms of international law with regard to immunities granted to states which are not party to the ICC,\u201d the French statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuch immunities apply to prime minister Netanyahu and other ministers in question, and must be taken into consideration should the ICC ask us to arrest them and hand them over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Benjamin<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Israel has informed the ICC that it intends to appeal the arrest warrants, which it described as \u201cbaseless\u201d and \u201cwithout any factual or legal foundation\u201d, according to a statement issued by Netanyahu\u2019s office on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould the ICC reject the appeal, this will underscore to Israel\u2019s friends in the US and around the world how biased the ICC is against the State of Israel,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French argument appeared to be a reference to article 98 of the Rome statute which states a country cannot \u201cact inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the \u2026 diplomatic immunity of a person\u201d. However, article 27 of the statute says that the immunity of high office \u201cshall not bar the court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ICC\u00a0ruled\u00a0in 2019 that article 98 was not a \u201cfountain of immunity\u201d but rather a \u201cprocedural rule\u201d that guided how the court should ask for a warrant to be carried out. The court\u00a0ruled\u00a0last month that Mongolia had violated its obligations as a party to the ICC by failing to arrest Putin when he visited the country in August, and that article 98 did not provide immunity from the war crimes charges against the Russian leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French foreign ministry at the time\u00a0said\u00a0it gave full support to the ICC, \u201ctrue to [France\u2019s] longstanding commitment to combat impunity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe French government\u2019s legal position now with respect to Netanyahu is inconsistent as compared to its position just a few months ago with respect to Putin,\u201d Milena Sterio, a professor at the Cleveland State University College of Law, said. \u201cIt is possible that the French government is softening its view vis-a-vis Israel\/Netanyahu in order to maintain working ties with the Israeli government, and in order to be in a position to continue to mediate between Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amnesty International\u00a0France\u00a0said the French position on Netanyahu \u201cruns counter to France\u2019s fundamental obligations as a member state of the ICC\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA cornerstone principle of the ICC statute is that no one is above the law, including heads of state sought for arrest, such as Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu,\u201d the human rights group said. \u201cThis has been confirmed in a decision by the court\u2019s appeals chamber in jurisprudence which is binding on all member states.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Lammy, the UK foreign secretary, said he would continue to engage with Netanyahu despite the arrest warrant but added he was under an \u201cobligation\u201d to refer the Israeli leader to the domestic court system if he came to the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould those named seek to come into our country that doesn\u2019t allow me any discretion, I will issue that, transmit that to the courts, and then the courts will make their determination under our law,\u201d Lammy told parliament\u2019s foreign affairs committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The French government has claimed that\u00a0Benjamin Netanyahu\u00a0has immunity from arrest warrants issued by the international criminal court for war crimes on the grounds that Israel is not an ICC member. The claim came soon after Netanyahu\u2019s cabinet agreed to a French-backed ceasefire in Lebanon and is in contrast to Paris\u2019s attitude towards last year\u2019s\u00a0ICC war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[8657,7167,9306,6975,10632,3782,12283,9194,8982,10507,12246,5575,6351,6225,2264,10754,10840,5908,9507,10954,11211,9722,3095,10342,9666,9667,6864,1253,1198,3174,1511,10313,71,5506,5217,12605,214,6348,694,5251,5761,36],"class_list":["post-44507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-amnesty","tag-amnesty-international","tag-appeal","tag-arrest","tag-attitude","tag-cabinet","tag-ceasefire","tag-charges","tag-combat","tag-court","tag-diplomatic","tag-france","tag-french","tag-friends","tag-government","tag-hezbollah","tag-human-rights","tag-icc","tag-immunity","tag-international","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-law","tag-lebanese","tag-lebanon","tag-ministers","tag-paris","tag-parliament","tag-prime-minister","tag-prime-minister-israeli-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-professor","tag-putin","tag-rome","tag-russian","tag-uk","tag-university","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-war-crimes","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44509,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44507\/revisions\/44509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}