International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women
International Criminal Court
(ICC) on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two
Taliban
leaders in
Afghanistan
, including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of the persecution of women and girls.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the Taliban, had committed the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds against girls, women and other persons nonconforming with the Taliban's policy on gender, gender identity or expression.
Since the Islamist Taliban returned to power in 2021, it has clamped down on women's rights, including limits to schooling, work and general independence in daily life.
The Taliban condemned the warrants as an example of hostility towards Islam.
'We neither recognise anything by the name of an international court nor do we consider ourselves bound by it,' the Taliban government's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, added in a statement.
It is the first time judges of the ICC have issued a warrant on charges of gender persecution.
An International Criminal Court arrest warrant has been issued for Taliban spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada. Photograph: Social media via Reuters
'While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,' the court said.
The full warrants and details on the specific incidents they are based on remain under seal to protect witnesses and victims, the court said.
NGOs hailed the warrants and called on the international community to back the ICC's work.
'The international community should fully back the ICC in its critical work in Afghanistan and globally, including through concerted efforts to enforce the court's warrants,' Human Rights Watch International Justice director Liz Evenson, said in a statement.
The ICC has been under increased criticism from non-member states such as the
United States
,
Israel
and
Russia
.
Last year the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu
for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the
Gaza
conflict. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President
Vladimir Putin
in 2023 on suspicion of deporting children from
Ukraine
.
Neither Russia nor Israel is a member of the court and both deny the accusations and reject ICC jurisdiction.
Last month the United States imposed sanctions on four ICC judges, including two who were involved in a ruling that allowed prosecutors to open a formal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including alleged crimes committed by American troops.
The ICC said it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims. – Reuters
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
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Irish Times
6 hours ago
- Irish Times
International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders in Afghanistan , including supreme spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada, accusing them of the persecution of women and girls. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the Taliban, had committed the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds against girls, women and other persons nonconforming with the Taliban's policy on gender, gender identity or expression. Since the Islamist Taliban returned to power in 2021, it has clamped down on women's rights, including limits to schooling, work and general independence in daily life. The Taliban condemned the warrants as an example of hostility towards Islam. 'We neither recognise anything by the name of an international court nor do we consider ourselves bound by it,' the Taliban government's spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, added in a statement. It is the first time judges of the ICC have issued a warrant on charges of gender persecution. An International Criminal Court arrest warrant has been issued for Taliban spiritual leader Haibatullah Akhundzada. Photograph: Social media via Reuters 'While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,' the court said. The full warrants and details on the specific incidents they are based on remain under seal to protect witnesses and victims, the court said. NGOs hailed the warrants and called on the international community to back the ICC's work. 'The international community should fully back the ICC in its critical work in Afghanistan and globally, including through concerted efforts to enforce the court's warrants,' Human Rights Watch International Justice director Liz Evenson, said in a statement. The ICC has been under increased criticism from non-member states such as the United States , Israel and Russia . Last year the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023 on suspicion of deporting children from Ukraine . Neither Russia nor Israel is a member of the court and both deny the accusations and reject ICC jurisdiction. Last month the United States imposed sanctions on four ICC judges, including two who were involved in a ruling that allowed prosecutors to open a formal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, including alleged crimes committed by American troops. The ICC said it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims. – Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
RTÉ News
12 hours ago
- RTÉ News
ICC issues arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders over persecution of women
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for two senior Taliban leaders, accusing them of crimes against humanity for persecuting women and girls. Judges said there were "reasonable grounds" to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution. "While the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms," the ICC said in a statement. The Taliban had "severely deprived" girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion, ICC judges said. "In addition, other persons were targeted because certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity were regarded as inconsistent with the Taliban's policy on gender." The court said the alleged crimes had been committed between 15 August, 2021, when the Taliban seized power, and continued until at least 20 January 2025. The ICC, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world's worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has no police force of its own and relies on member states to carry out its arrest warrants - with mixed results. In theory, this means anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained. Ongoing persecution After sweeping back to power in August 2021, the Taliban authorities pledged a softer rule than their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. However, they quickly imposed restrictions on women and girls, which the United Nations has labelled "gender apartheid". Edicts in line with their interpretation of Islamic law handed down by Mr Akhundzada, who rules by decree from the movement's birthplace in southern Kandahar, have squeezed women and girls from public life. The Taliban government barred girls from secondary school and women from university in the first 18 months after they ousted the US-backed government. The move made Afghanistan the only country in the world to impose such bans. Authorities imposed restrictions on women working for non-governmental groups and other employment, with thousands of women losing government jobs - or being paid to stay home. Beauty salons have been closed and women blocked from visiting public parks, gyms and baths as well as travelling long distances without a male chaperone. A "vice and virtue" law announced last summer ordered women not to sing or recite poetry in public and for their voices and bodies to be "concealed" outside the home. When requesting the arrest warrants in January, chief prosecutor Karim Khan said Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing "an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban". "Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable," he added. Mr Khan warned at the time he would soon be seeking additional warrants for other Taliban officials.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Post-Brexit export drive hampered by UK trade finance regulations, ICC warns
Britain's financial regulators are failing to push through vital reforms needed to unlock some £22 billion (€25.5 billion) in trade finance for small businesses, the UK branch of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has warned. In a letter to the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), the ICC said there was an 'urgent need' for reforms to regulations governing the raising of trade finance that is key to underwriting global transactions. The letter warned that the 'antiquated' regulatory framework for trade finance offset the benefits of a new law introduced in 2023 to digitise the paperwork for exporting. 'These gains are negated by an antiquated regulatory framework that remains bureaucratic and inefficient, with laborious compliance checks and overburdensome capital requirements,' wrote ICC boss Chris Southworth to the FCA's chief executive Nikhil Rathi. READ MORE However, the FCA and PRA both pushed back against the criticism, saying they have already proposed an easing of compliance and capital rules in key areas of trade finance. The ICC's intervention comes two weeks after the UK government published a trade strategy that promised to boost the country's flagging trade performance since Brexit. [ EU blocks Britain's attempts to join pan-European trading bloc Opens in new window ] The group has been lobbying in recent years for an overhaul of the Basle 3.1 bank capital rules and expressed frustration that regulators have not moved fast enough, despite pressure from chancellor Rachel Reeves this year for them to take a more pro-growth stance. Mr Southworth said moves by regulators to rework Basle 3.1 regulations ahead of an implementation deadline at the start of 2027 were too slow and insufficiently far-reaching. How the wealthy are buying up land to avoid inheritance tax Listen | 22:03 'Reforms must be accelerated and deadlines brought forward to ensure the benefits are realised within this Parliament,' he wrote. 'It is time for greater ambition and a smarter, more agile regulatory framework.' The ICC said the UK, despite being a hub for global trade finance, had fallen behind competitors including Hong Kong, India, UAE and the US, which all 'have more agile and responsive regulatory frameworks'. It wants to see a lighter touch regulatory regime, with onerous 'know your customer' rules streamlined, and a lowering of the capital requirement threshold for trading SMEs. These would help reduce the £22 billion UK 'trade finance gap' between gap between the demand for trade finance and the amount of financing actually available, it said. [ Brexit was 'single stupidest thing a country's ever done' Opens in new window ] The FCA said it was already considering easing its compliance rules on financial transactions. In response to prime minister Keir Starmer's request for ideas to support economic growth and competitiveness, the authority said in January it would discuss ways to relax 'anti-money laundering' checks on smaller transactions. 'Our letter to the prime minister set out one potential way of reducing anti-money laundering costs by relaxing know-your-customer checks on small transactions,' the FCA said. 'We are testing this idea with the government.' The PRA also rebuffed the criticism, pointing out that it had proposed a reworking of bank capital requirements to loosen them on lending to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and on trade finance, partly based on information provided by the ICC. 'As announced earlier this year, we plan to implement Basle 3.1 rules, including those relevant to trade finance, on 1 January 2027,' the PRA said. 'This date was chosen to give firms sufficient time to implement the final rules themselves.' 'Our implementation of Basle 3.1 is designed to lessen burdens on trade finance by reducing capital requirements for some relevant exposures, and incorporates feedback provided by the ICC in the consultation period,' the authority added. The Department for Business and Trade said its new trade strategy would help UK business succeed in the global market. It added: 'The UK plans to implement these reforms in January 2027, giving our firms certainty to plan for the future and allowing more time for greater clarity globally.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
