After the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Israeli defence minister, and a Hamas leader, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry says the decisions must be implemented.
“The Court’s decisions are binding on member states. Once the court issues an arrest warrant, its execution is binding in all state parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC or those states or territories that accept the ICC’s jurisdiction,” the ministry said in a commentary forwarded to BNS on Thursday.
Lithuania has consistently supported and sustained the work of the ICC and respects its independence and impartiality, the ministry said.
The Rome Statute entered into force in Lithuania in August 2003, and currently 125 countries are parties to it. The most recent accession is Ukraine, where the Statute will enter into force on January 1 next year.
“Lithuania would also like to remind you that not all the masterminds and perpetrators of the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have been punished, and that about 100 Israeli and other citizens are still being held hostage,” the Lithuanian ministry added.
On Thursday, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.
The warrants were issued on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the war in the Gaza Strip and the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Thursday that the arrest warrants issued by the ICC were binding and should be executed and that it was not a political decision.
The human rights group Amnesty International said that the ICC ruling made Netanyahu an officially wanted person.
For his part, the Israeli prime minister accused the ICC of anti-Semitism, calling its decision “the Dreyfus case of our time”, and insisted that it would not affect the country’s actions in protecting its citizens.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the ICC’s arrest warrant “a dark day for justice”.
Meanwhile, the United States rejected the ICC’s decision in principle, with the White House insisting that there had been procedural errors in the rush to issue the three arrest warrants by Prosecutor Karim Khan.
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