On May 22, 2024, the Geneva International Peace Research Institute (GIPRI), the Collectif de Juristes pour le Respect des Engagements Internationaux de la France (CJRF) and a group of international concerned citizens, submitted a legal brief to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan requesting the opening of an investigation against Ursula von der Leyen for complicity in war crimes and genocide against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the Gaza Strip.
This legal brief, endorsed by various human rights groups and prominent academics and experts in international criminal law, calls the Prosecutor to initiate investigations on the basis of the information provided against Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. The latter has been repeatedly informed of violations of international humanitarian law committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip, through reports from international organizations and foreign governments. This is evidenced by a letter sent to her on February 14, 2024, by the President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, and the then Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar.[1]
Mrs Ursula von der Leyen is responsible for aiding and abetting the commission of crimes and violations of international humanitarian law, within the meaning of Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Mrs von der Leyen enjoys no functional immunity before the International Criminal Court by virtue of Article 27 of the Rome Statute.
The President of the European Commission is complicit in violations of Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute by her positive actions (military, political, diplomatic support to Israel) and by her failure to take timely action on behalf of the European Commission to help prevent genocide as required by the 1948 Genocide Convention. Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen cannot deny awareness of the plausibility of these crimes, especially following the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures order of 26 January 2024 in the pending ICJ case South Africa v. Israel. More importantly, Mrs. Von der Leyen has failed to take appropriate action to prevent such crimes, whereas the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Statute of the International Criminal Court make prevention an erga omnes obligation.
[1] Leo Varadkar and Pedro Sánchez, Letter to the President of the Commission of the European Union Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, Oifig an Taoisigh (Office of the Taoiseach) and Gobierno de España – Presidencia del Gobierno, 14/02/2024.
BRAVO, take the B down!
Ursula Von Der Leyen is guilty as charged. She wants the world to give Israel endless, needless aid to continue its genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
She said “Israel Is A Land Without A People For A People Without A Land”. There were Palestinians and Israeli Arabs living there long before Israel’s creation in 1948. Nobody discovered a land uninhabited by humans that would be the perfect place for Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
The Israeli premise would seem to be that the Palestinians are subhuman and therefore not human.
Separately, South Africa had African migrants move in for work, and Israel claims the Palestinians were nomads who did the same.
If Ursula von der Leyen is going to be prosecuted, what about Joe Biden? Genocide Joe is vastly more involved.
I’m no fan of Ursula von der Leyen, but asking the ICC to charge her with “complicity in genocide” is idiotic. The ICC hasn’t even accused anyone from Israel of genocide. The indictments that the ICC has issued against Netanyahu et. al. don’t accuse anybody of genocide.
This is just a noisy sideshow. Gaza is now a perfect incubator for H5N1 to evolve and become human transmissible. It is crowded under wartime conditions with lots of desperate people, and if Bird Flu started spreading nobody would likely notice until Israeli troops caught it.
Human waste piling up. Sewage, salt water in aquifers. 1.3 million jammed into a 6 kilometer x 6 kilometer area. Weather due to warm up. Perfect incubator for diseases. Bombs still raining on Palestinians. IDF still killing. Yes, get the h*ll rid of her.