Middle East & North Africa
Palestine: Opening of an International Criminal Court investigation into the crime against the Al-Jalaa Tower Complex

Therefore, as a first step following the Court’s ruling on territorial jurisdiction, AFD International has filed, through a number of international lawyers, another complaint to the ICC Prosecutor’s office, dated Friday, May 21st, 2021, on behalf of the Al-Jalaa Tower Complex owner. AFD today’s complaint emphasizes that targeting this civilian facility, in which a number of International and local news agencies, as well as many offices of lawyers and doctors were located, and thus the building is among the civilian facilities forbidden to be targeted by law and international agreements, which constitutes a full-fledged criminal act which is prohibited by international law and needs to be preliminarily investigated by the ICC. It encloses the power of attorney signed by the victims, numerous supporting documents and legal characterization and aims at convincing the Prosecutor to proceed with the investigation, as per article 15 of the Rome statute. As we submit this information to the court, we note that it concerns Palestine, which is a member state of the court. The court has, therefore, the obligation to provide appropriate legal protection to it, and to exercise due diligence in investigating the crimes committed by Israeli occupation. The goal is to enforce the principles of non-impunity, non- prescription of war crimes and non-immunity of war criminals.