Khaled al-Shouli, one of the driving forces behind the International Criminal Court’s potential issuance of an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defended Hamas’s October 7 attacks, according to a Jewish Chronicle investigation published on Friday.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has been pursuing potential arrest warrants related to war crimes indictments against Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi - an action that has been critiqued by both the Israeli government and international allies.
Al-Shouli reportedly said in a televised interview with the Algerian Almagharibia channel, screened on October 8th, that the attacks, which saw over 1200 people killed and over 250 more kidnapped, was justified under international law. Al-Should claimed the attacks were a “reaction to Israeli violations.”
While al-Shouli reportedly accepted there may have been “some [war crime or human rights] violations” by Hamas, he claimed, “We know that the Palestinian side has the intention to respect the rules of international law because the Palestinian side has already… become a member of the ICC.” Israel, he went on, was “not committed to international law” because it had not recognized the ICC.
Additionally, French-Algerian lawyer Abdelmajid Mrari described Hamas as a resistance movement. Mrari is also one of the 600 lawyers who had filed evidence in the ICC’s current investigation.
Mrari claimed that, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Israel had no right to self-defense as it is an “occupier” in Gaza, according to the Jewish Chronicle. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Defending terrorist groups in court
Both Mrari and al-Shouli have reportedly represented Hamas or its members in previous court actions.
Mrari, in 2023, filed an action on behalf of a senior Hamas figure and several other demanding that Israel lift the “siege” on Gaza. The same Hamas official represented by Mrari, Ahmad Bahar, asked Allah to “kill the Jews and their supporters, the Americans and their supporters, without leaving a single one” in a 2012 televised sermon, the JC reported.
Ignoring their terrorist status in Europe, the France-based Mrari has claimed that Hamas are “the resistance” and a “resistance movement” in several public incidents since October 8th.
Likewise, al-Shouli has previously challenged the EU designation of Hamas as terrorists. In 2014, al-Shouli was successful but the decision was appealed three years later.
French lawyer Gilles Devers, who reportedly filed the first of many complaints to the ICC about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in 2009, also appeared in the address by both men.
Devers gave a statement addressed to Palestinians and stated: “You had no one to defend you, but now you now have an army to defend you in international and national courts.”