The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) have filed a joint case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the killing of Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Anas Al-Sharif and his colleagues in Gaza, according to a joint statement released on Tuesday.
As per an Anadolu report, on Sunday, the 28-year-old journalist was filming outside Al Shifa Hospital when a missile struck the tent where he and other reporters were sheltering. Seven people were killed, including four Al Jazeera journalists and one working for Sahat Media Platform.
The Israeli military later admitted that the strike was deliberate, accusing the victims of being “terrorists in press vests.”
The ICC filing names senior Israeli military and political figures, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and accuses them of war crimes and genocide.
It urges the court to issue arrest warrants, expand Netanyahu’s warrant to include crimes against journalists, and include the killing of more than 220 journalists in its Palestine investigation.
“The assassination of Anas Al-Sharif was so blunt, so arrogant, and so drenched in contempt for human life, truth, the legal order, and humanity itself that it cannot and will not be allowed to pass into silence,” said HRF Chairman Dyab Abou Jahjah.
Underlining the evidence present, they urged the ICC to “move past statements of ‘grave concern’ and take the decisive step that justice demands: act.”
Additionally, UN experts, in a separate statement, condemned the killings of Al Jazeera journalists.
“The killing of four journalists just as Israel announces its plan to take over Gaza City is no coincidence, but a deliberate attempt to silence those who would have exposed the IDF’s atrocities to the world,” they said.
“It is outrageous that the Israeli army dares to first launch a campaign to smear Anas Al-Sharif as Hamas in order to discredit his reporting and then kill him and his colleagues for speaking the truth to the world.”
These are acts of “an arrogant army that believes itself to be impune, no matter the gravity of the crimes it commits,” they said, urging an end to the impunity.
“The States that continue to support Israel must now place tough sanctions against its government in order to end the killings, the atrocities and the mass starvation,” they concluded.
