British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney announced on Monday that she assisted the International Criminal Court (ICC) in evaluating evidence that led to its decision to seek arrest warrants against senior leaders in Israel and the Hamas movement. Clooney had faced widespread criticism on social media for remaining silent about the civilian death toll in Gaza.
In her statement published on the website of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which she established with her husband, American actor George Clooney, she said that Prosecutor Karim Khan requested her to join a panel of experts to assess evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza. The statement came on the same day that Khan announced he is seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of committing crimes including starvation, premeditated murder, and genocide.
Clooney added that despite their diverse backgrounds, the legal conclusions reached by the committee were unanimous, noting reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh from Hamas are involved in hostage-taking, killings, and acts of sexual violence. Regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, she also stated there are reasonable grounds to believe that both are engaged in using starvation as a method of warfare, as well as murder, persecution, and genocide.
Khan expressed his gratitude to lawyer Clooney in his statement announcing the request for arrest warrants. Clooney, along with other members of the expert panel, also published an article on Monday in the Financial Times endorsing the ICC's prosecutions regarding war crimes in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. While Hamas, Israel, and the United States condemned this move by the ICC, the experts wrote that they unanimously agree that the prosecutor's actions were thorough, fair, and grounded in law and facts.
Clooney clarified in her statement that her approach is not to provide continuous commentary on her work but to let the work speak for itself. She emphasized, "I worked on this committee because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives." She added that the law protecting civilians during war has been developed over more than a century and applies to every country in the world regardless of the reasons for disputes.
