Kabul rejects ICC's 'politically motivated' arrest request against Taliban leaders

ISTANBUL

The Afghan interim administration Friday rejected arrest requests sought by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor against Taliban leaders, calling it "politically motivated."

It called Karim Khan's move “devoid of a fair legal basis,” according to a statement by the Foreign Ministry on X.

Khan on Thursday filed two requests for arrest warrants with Pre-Trial Chamber II of the ICC against Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Afghanistan’s interim Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani.

However, Kabul “strongly condemned” ICC and dismissed the “baseless allegations.”

It accused the ICC of turning “a blind eye” to the crimes committed during the US invasion of Afghanistan, adding Khan’s move has eroded the “already weak credibility” of the ICC.

The prosecutor’s office had remarked that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds, under article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute,” coming to the conclusion these Taliban leaders were “criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women.”

Taliban returned to power in Kabul in August 2021 after the ouster of foreign forces from the war-torn nation. The interim administration in the war-torn nation has barred girls from pursuing education beyond the sixth grade.