Amal Clooney, key figure in request for Netanyahu’s arrest by the International Criminal Court People

This Monday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced that it will request an arrest warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Defense Minister, Yoav Galant. Apart from this, he has also demanded the arrest of three prominent leaders of Hamas. The ICC charges both of them with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The order came from his chief prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, 53, but he did not make the decision alone. For that, he has a series of high-level criminal lawyers who have advised him through extensive reports prepared over months. And one of those prominent lawyers has been Amal Clooney.

The 46-year-old British woman was known in her line of work for years for her high-profile lawsuits, although under her maiden name Alamuddin. However, she began to enter the international celebrity scene when she began her relationship with well-known actor George Clooney in 2013, and especially since their wedding, which took place in Venice in September 2014. It was organized with great pomp. Since then, the two have always been close, positioned on the side of the Democrats – with frequent and harsh criticism against former President Donald Trump – and have been involved in various political and humanitarian causes, but not many people knew that this lawyer of influence. level has been reached.

Indeed, for several months some have been wondering where the wedding took place and why she did not speak about the war between Israel and Gaza that began on October 6, especially because of her profession and the fact that she is Lebanese by birth, although raised in the United Kingdom (she studied law at Oxford). The couple has a foundation, the so-called Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ), and they were committed, for example, to the victims of the war in Ukraine, but remained silent with regard to the Middle East conflict. However, until now it has not been known why during all these months the jurist was dedicated to preparing a complex act for the CFI.

In a note released by her foundation accompanying the report, the lawyer explained that more than four months ago, Prosecutor Khan – with whom she has been cooperating since 2021 – asked her to “help evaluate the evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Asked for help. “Humanity in Israel and Gaza” with a panel of advisors “experts in international law, including humanitarian law and international criminal law.” Now he explains in a statement on his website, “I accepted it and joined a panel of international legal experts to complete this task.” “Together we have conducted an extensive process of evidence review and legal analysis.”

“Despite our different personal backgrounds, our legal conclusions are unanimous,” Clooney says. “We have unanimously decided that the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian civilians. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and sexual violence. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare, Includes “murder, persecution and destruction”.

The lawyer explains that she decided to participate in this panel because she believes strongly in the law and “the need to protect civilian life” and that it is the right to protect the civilian population in times of war, as That, she explains, was developed more than 100 years ago and is applied in all countries of the world, “regardless of the causes of conflict.” “As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that the value of one child’s life is less than that of another. I do not believe that any conflict is beyond the reach of the law, nor is any criminal above the law. That is why I support the historic step taken by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to bring justice to the victims of atrocities committed in Israel and Palestine.

As she says, she does not want to comment on the findings, but rather “let the work speak for itself.” “I hope that the witnesses will cooperate in the ongoing investigation. And I hope there will be justice in a region that is already suffering so much.

For more than 20 years, Clooney has been involved in many and very diverse causes. She works at a prestigious London law firm specializing in human rights called Doughty Street Chambers and is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School in New York. She has been collaborating with Prosecutor Khan for three years, when he asked her to act as a special advisor to observe the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region. In addition to creating the foundation in her name in 2016 with her husband – who is also the father of her nearly seven-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander – they have made numerous donations through it together, such as the million dollars they gave to The fight against racist and hate crimes in the United States in 2017, an aid project to send 3,000 Syrian refugee children to school in Lebanon, arms control or housing an Iraqi refugee fleeing Islamic State. The lawyer has also worked on international cases such as the long-running border dispute between Vietnam and Cambodia in 2011; Return of Greek Marbles from the British Museum to Greece; Or in recognition of the Armenian Genocide.