In an unprecedented move, a US-based human rights group has formally submitted a referral at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against members of the previous administration of Joe Biden and the former president for their complicity in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) has called for a formal investigation into the actions of Biden, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, and other US officials.
Dawn was founded by Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi – who wrote for Middle East Eye and The Washington Post – and was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. Dawn supports democracy and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa and works to end US support for abusive, undemocratic governments in the region.
“There are solid grounds to investigate Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin for complicity in Israel’s crimes,” said Reed Brody, Dawn board member and veteran war crimes lawyer. “The bombs dropped on Israeli hospitals, schools and homes are American bombs, the campaign of murder and persecution has been carried out with American support. US officials have been aware of exactly what Israel is doing, and yet their support never stopped.”
The US and Israel are not signatories to the Rome Statute that founded the ICC.
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So why take the case to the ICC?
“We have tried every possible venue in the US to stop the flow of US weapons to Israel and contacting and lobbying officials and working with congress and filing a lawsuit. None of these actions by any of our partners have led to any measures of accountability or suspended arms being sent to Israel. We were only left with the option of resorting to the ICC,” Raed Jarrar, Dawn’s advocacy director, told Middle East Eye.
Jarrar added that Dawn had hired a European legal team consisting of ICC-registered attorneys.
The case
In their 172-page submission, Dawn urges the ICC to investigate and prosecute officials for their roles in aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes through providing military, political, and public support to Israel, with awareness that US weapons and intelligence were being used to commit war crimes.
Material support includes at least $17.9bn of weapons transfers, intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, diplomatic protection, and official endorsement of Israeli crimes despite knowledge of how such support had and would substantially enable grave abuses.
Dawn says it submitted its communication to the ICC in response to the ICC prosecutor’s November 2023 call for parties to bring forth information relevant to his office’s probe.
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The organisation says that aiding and abetting such crimes is an international criminal offence, and the ICC, as the only permanent international criminal court globally, is the proper venue for prosecuting such crimes, especially as there is no option for these officials to face prosecution for their crimes in the US.
Dawn also laid out in their submission how the actions of former US government administration members meet the legal standard for aiding and abetting under Article 25 of the ICC’s Rome Statute, which criminalises knowingly facilitating the commission of crimes.
“The submission demonstrates that Biden, Blinken, and Austin were aware of how their assistance would be used to commit crimes,” Dawn’s press release states.
The group argues that Biden administration officials repeatedly intervened to block efforts to curb US military assistance despite knowledge of its role in facilitating Israeli war crimes.
“Indeed, they ensured that US support continued despite the knowledge that such support violated US laws prohibiting military assistance to abusive security forces, ignored pleas from United Nations officials and agencies, and defied the International Court of Justice’s orders to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of weapons to Israel that could be used to commit genocide in Gaza,” Dawn said.
Other administration officials Dawn has urged the ICC to examine in their submission include Jake Sullivan, then-national security advisor; Gina Raimondo, then-secretary of commerce; Bonnie Jenkins, then-under secretary of arms control and international security; Stanley L Brown, acting assistant secretary of political-military affairs; Amanda Dory, acting under secretary of defence for policy, and Mike Miller, acting director of the Defence Security Cooperation Agency.
During a press conference on Monday, board member Brody said he did not know how long it would take the ICC to address their case.
Dawn submitted their document to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan on 19 January, towards the end of the last administration’s term, but didn’t make it public, hoping to avoid the US government’s initial period of transition from the Biden administration to Donald Trump’s administration.
Khan and other ICC officials have already been sanctioned by the Trump administration, but Dawn hopes that the legal action will serve as a reminder to the present administration.
“We’re not operating in a vacuum. Although this focuses on the Biden administration, we hope the Trump administration will read it and take it as a wake-up call; otherwise, they will have criminal liability too,” Jarrar told MEE.
