Rights groups slam Lebanon backtrack on ICC
Human rights activists have criticized Beirut's decision to stop asking the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
"Our initial optimism about the Lebanese government's decision... has given way to deep disappointment," said Amnesty International's deputy regional director, Aya Majzoub.
Beirut "says it wants justice for the targeting and killing of journalists, the attacks on medical facilities and other civilian infrastructure... yet it has shut the door on one of the few avenues for accountability", she told AFP.
Lebanon's Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the Lebanese government decided to "modify" an April decision in which it said it would "submit a declaration to the registrar of the International (Criminal) Court to accept its jurisdiction in investigating and prosecuting all crimes committed on Lebanese soil since October 7".
The government said it would instead file complaints to the United Nations.
Those "crimes" included the killing of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in south Lebanon on October 13. Six other journalists from Reuters, Al Jazeera and AFP were wounded. One of them, AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, later had a leg amputated.
A Reuters probe found two Israeli tank rounds were used in the attack, in an investigation it carried out with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), an independent research institute.
The Lebanese government's decisions made specific reference to the TNO findings.
Human Rights Watch has said the strikes were "apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, which is a war crime".
HRW's Middle East and North Africa director, Lama Fakih, said the government's U-turn was "a really difficult pill to swallow".
It would have been a chance for victims "to have their day in court, to be able to see a path towards justice", she told AFP.
Lebanese rights group Legal Agenda said that "some influential political parties within the cabinet, and particularly Hezbollah, were not entirely satisfied" with the April move.
Those parties might have feared the ICC would also prosecute Lebanese officials, including from Hezbollah, it said in a statement.
The ICC's prosecutor Karim Khan said this month he had applied for arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders over the conflict.
In Lebanon, the cross-border violence has killed at least 443 people, mostly militants but also including 86 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on the other side of the border.
Source: Agence France Presse
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