ICC Seeks Arrest Warrant for 2 Taliban Leaders

A Taliban fighter stands guard as women wait to receive food rations distributed by a humanitarian aid group in Kabul, Afghanistan, on May 23, 2023. Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for two of the leaders of the Taliban for the “persecution” of Afghan women and girls, he announced Thursday.

Karim Khan said he had asked ICC judges to approve warrants for the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhunzada, 64, and the head of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, 57.

In a statement on the ICC’s website Khan said, “My office has concluded that these two Afghan nationals are criminally responsible for persecuting Afghan girls and women, as well as persons whom the Taliban perceived as not conforming with their ideological expectations of gender identity or expression, and persons whom the Taliban perceived as allies of girls and women.”

Khan, a British lawyer who has been the ICC’s chief prosecutor since June 2021, said the crimes committed by the pair dated from Aug. 15, 2021 until the present day.

The Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, the same day the U.S.-backed President Ashraf Ghani fled into exile.

During their second period in charge of Afghanistan—they ruled the country between September 1996 and November 2001—they have banned women from jobs, most public spaces and education beyond the sixth grade.

Last year the Taliban banned women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws to combat vice and promote virtue in Afghanistan.

Akhunzada also issued an edict that buildings should not have windows looking into places where a woman might sit or stand.

The Taliban says its promotion of virtue includes prayer, aligning the character and behavior of Muslims with sharia law, encouraging women to wear the hijab, and inviting people to comply with the five pillars of the religion.

Sharia Does Not ‘Justify’

But Khan said, “My office further submits that the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia should not, and may not be used to justify the deprivation of fundamental human rights or the related commission of Rome Statute crimes.”

He said it was not just women and girls, but their “allies” who were being targeted by the Taliban.

In a 51-page document detailing the charges against Akhunzada, Khan says, “Perceived allies of girls and women were often held arbitrarily, and incommunicado, and subject to torture, and other acts of sexual violence.”

Khan said the charges also related to the treatment of lesbian, gay and bisexual Afghans.

He said, “These applications recognise that Afghan women and girls as well as the LGBTQI+ community are facing an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”

It is the first time in the ICC’s history that persecution of homosexuals or bisexuals have been considered a crime against humanity.

In 2022 the court, based in The Hague, approved a request by Khan to open an investigation into the Taliban’s activities in Afghanistan, but it was shelved after the government in Kabul said it could handle the investigation.

But on Thursday, Khan said he wished to reopen the investigation and issue arrest warrants because there was “no longer the prospect of genuine and effective domestic investigations” in Afghanistan.

There is no deadline for ICC judges to rule on a request for a warrant.

‘Deportation of Children’

In 2023, three weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, for “alleged war crimes of deportation of children from Ukrainian occupied territories into the Russian Federation,”

In November last year, the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier this month the House passed a bill sanctioning the ICC over the warrant issued for Netanyahu, and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Undated image of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan speaking to reporters in Khartoum, Sudan. Ebrahim Hamid/AFP via Getty Images

The Taliban leaders are unlikely to be arrested unless they venture out of Afghanistan to a country which recognizes the ICC.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has not commented on Khan’s move.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.