ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan asserts that crimes against humanity are occurring in Afghanistan.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has requested arrest warrants for two leading Taliban figures accused of human rights abuses against women in Afghanistan.
Khan’s statement on Thursday alleges that Taliban Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Afghanistan’s Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani are criminally responsible for the crime against humanity of gender-based persecution.
Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, women, girls, and members of the LGBTQ community have been denied their rights to physical integrity, autonomy, free movement, expression, education, family life, and assembly, he stated.
Any dissent is brutally suppressed through murder, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and other inhumane acts.
“The Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia cannot justify the denial of fundamental human rights,” the Hague-based prosecutor declared.
ICC judges will determine whether to issue detention orders for Akhundzada and Haqqani. The prosecutor stated that if warrants are issued, his office will pursue their arrests.
Khan announced that he will soon seek arrest warrants for other high-ranking Taliban officials, and investigations into the situation in Afghanistan are ongoing.
The Taliban government has yet to officially respond to the ICC’s statement.
Over the past three years, since ousting the US-backed Afghan government, the Taliban has imposed numerous restrictions on women, mandating full body covering in public, prohibiting work with men, university and secondary school attendance, solo travel, and speaking loudly in public, even to other women.