Human rights campaigners around the world have welcomed the surprise decision by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to seek warrants for the arrest of two senior Taliban officials for alleged war crimes against women and girls.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, said on Thursday there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the organisation’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, bore criminal responsibility for the crime of “persecution on gender grounds”.
“My office has concluded”, he said, “that these two Afghan nationals are criminally responsible for persecuting not alone women and girls but also persons whom the Taliban perceive as not conforming to their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression.”
Among the broad swathe of groups allegedly targeted, he added, were “any persons whom the Taliban perceives as allies of women and girls who might be regarded as non-conformist”.
Mr Khan dates the alleged persecution from “at least” August 15th, 2021, the day Taliban forces captured the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, two weeks before the chaotic withdrawal of US forces – up to the present day.
Since the Islamist group returned to power, it has clamped down on women’s right to work, schooling, andparticipation – even visibility – in public life.
Opposition to the Taliban, Mr Khan said, was “brutally repressed through the commission of crimes, including murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts”.
He said his office was demonstrating its commitment to pursuing accountability for gender-based crimes – and said the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, could never be an acceptable justification for human rights abuses or crimes.
“Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQI+ community, are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban. Our action today signals that the status quo for women in Afghanistan is not acceptable,” he said.
This is the first time the prosecutor has sought warrants as part of the court’s investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, which dates back to 2007 and at one stage included the actions of US forces and the CIA before they were controversially “de-prioritised” by Mr Khan in December 2021.
It will now be up to a panel of three ICC judges to decide whether or not the warrants will granted. There is no specified time period within which this must happen.
Even if the warrants are granted, the court has no policing mechanism to ensure they are enforced; it depends on the 125 countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute which set up the court to make arrests within their own borders. This obligation is frequently ignored.
Even so, Human Rights Watch welcomed the applications for the warrants, calling them “a reminder that justice can prevail”.
“We are also hoping to see the ICC expand its investigation to include other grave abuses, including those committed by international military forces and by the Islamic State group in Afghanistan”, said spokeswoman Fereshta Abassi.
The timing of the prosecutor’s application for the Afghanistan warrants surprised many international legal observers given that the court is widely expected to be targeted with sanctions by the new Trump White House as a reprisal for its decision to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
