Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland criticized the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor for including the prime minister of democratic Israel and Hamas leaders in his list of people for whom he requests an international arrest warrant.
“For Canada, it is not correct to make an equivalence between the leaders of a terrorist organization and the elected leaders of a democracy,” said Mr.me Freeland on Tuesday without revealing more about his position on the merits of the case.
The number two in the Canadian government tirelessly repeated the same answer to this question from journalists during a press conference. She simply said that she “respects” the ICC and its independence. She refused to answer “hypothetical” questions about Canada’s position if the judges of the International Criminal Court accept her prosecutor’s request.
“We understand the level of humanitarian tragedy that we see today in Gaza,” she said, after condemning the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on Sunday targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with a request for an international arrest warrant. They are suspected of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as deliberately starving civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Three Hamas leaders are also targeted by such a request: they are accused in particular of sexual violence and hostage-taking during the organization’s major surprise attack in Israel in October 2023. The ICC should decide in the coming weeks if it agrees to issue such mandates.
The United States reacted strongly to this request from the ICC prosecutor targeting Israeli politicians, also seeing in it an “equivalence” between the actions of Israel and Hamas. President Joe Biden described Attorney Khan’s request as “scandalous”.
On Tuesday, the Advisory Center on Jewish and Israeli Relations urged the Canadian government to reject out of hand the “ICC’s assault on Israel.” “This amounts to indicting Churchill and Hitler for their role in the Second World War and putting on an equal footing their responsibilities for the civilian losses of that war,” we can read in a press release.
Unlike the United States, Canada is a member country of the ICC.
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, had yet to answer questions from the media at the time of writing.