ICC cancels warrant for Hamas military leader Deif, weeks after group confirms death
Court says ‘sufficient and reliable information’ that Muhammad Deif was killed last July, will reissue warrant ‘should information become available that Mr. Deif is still alive’
The International Criminal Court on Wednesday scrapped an arrest warrant issued against Hamas’s late military chief Muhammad Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year.
The decision by The Hague-based court came after prosecutors earlier this month told its judges they had “sufficient and reliable information” that Deif was killed last July in Gaza.
“As a result, the Chamber decides to terminate the proceedings against Mr Deif and renders the arrest warrant… against him without effect,” presiding judge Nicolas Guillou said in a written decision.
Hamas did not confirm Deif’s death until late last month when the group issued a statement announcing the “martyrdom” of the shadowy leader.
Judge Guillou added the order was “without prejudice to pursuing again, should information become available that Mr. Deif is still alive.”
Hamas did not officially confirm Deif’s death until last month, more than six months after his killing in a July 13, 2024 airstrike, with the terror group previously denying he had been killed.
Deif, along with Hamas’s Gaza leader Sinwar, was an architect of Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists broke through the border and killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while taking 251 people hostage to Gaza.
He had topped Israel’s most-wanted list since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of a large number of terror attacks, including many bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Until the July strike, Deif had survived seven Israeli attempts on his life over the years, some of which had maimed him.
Despite the IDF announcing that it had killed Deif in August, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him on November 21 along with warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The ICC listed the charges against Deif as crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture and sexual violence as well as war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, torture, hostage-taking, outrages upon personal dignity and sexual violence.
Netanyahu and Gallant were both charged with war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally targeting a civilian population, and crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts during the war in Gaza.
Israel has strongly rejected the substance of the allegations, insisting that it has funneled massive amounts of humanitarian aid through the crossings along the Gaza border and that any problems with the distribution of that aid to the Palestinian civilian population were a result of inefficient operations by the aid organizations on the ground, difficulties arising from the ongoing conflict in the territory, and the looting of aid by Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Israel has also rejected allegations that it targets civilians, insisting that civilian casualties caused by the operation have resulted in large part due to Hamas’s tactic of embedding its fighters and installations within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
The ICC was established in 2002 as the permanent court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities — war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression.
The court’s 125 member states include Palestine, Ukraine, Canada, and every country in the European Union, but dozens of countries don’t accept the court’s jurisdiction, including Israel, the United States, Russia, and China.
The Times of Israel Community.