Israeli families bring war crime, genocide complaint against Hamas to ICC

The families of nine Israeli victims of last month’s Hamas massacre have lodged a complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suspected war crimes, their lawyer says.

The families also want Hamas prosecuted for genocide, and the ICC to issue an international arrest warrant for its leaders, lawyer Francois Zimeray says in a statement.

On October 7, the Hamas terror group carried out a bloody onslaught that killed some 1,400 people in Israel, the vast majority of them civilians slaughtered in their homes or at an outdoor music festival, and resulted in at least 246 kidnapped to Gaza.

“The complaint concerns victims who were all civilians,” Zimeray says, adding that several of them were at the Supernova rave near Re’im, where some 260 were butchered.

“The complaint states that the Hamas terrorists do not deny the crimes committed, which they have amply documented and broadcast, and that the… facts cannot therefore be disputed,” he says.

In an interview with France’s Radio Classique, Zimeray says he has always been wary of “excessive qualifications” of events.

But, he says, he and his legal team have established that the genocide accusation “holds up before the law.”

Any individual or group can bring a case to the ICC, which is located in The Hague, but it is up to the court’s prosecutor to launch an investigation.

Contacted by AFP, the court is not immediately able to say whether it has received the paperwork.