Swiss prosecutors said Wednesday they were examining several complaints against President Isaac Herzog, as reports suggested NGOs were accusing Israel’s head-of-state of “incitement to genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) confirmed it had received “several criminal complaints” against Herzog, who was at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos this week.
“The criminal complaints are now being examined in accordance with the usual procedure,” the OAG said in an email sent to AFP, adding that the office was in contact with Switzerland’s foreign ministry “to examine the question of the immunity of the person concerned.”
It provided no details on the specific complaints filed.
The Swiss Keystone-ATS news agency reported that one of the complaints came from an NGO called Legal Action Against Genocide.
The NGO was calling for Herzog to be prosecuted “for incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity,” the news agency said.
President Isaac Herzog (R) and CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria take part in a session during the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21, 2025. (FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP)
The complaint, it said, deemed he had played “an active role in the ideological justification of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, by erasing all distinction between the civilian population and combatants.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly denied allegations of war crimes and genocide, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Herzog spoke at Davos on Tuesday and held meetings on Wednesday morning but has since left Switzerland.
Complaints were also filed against him when he attended the Davos meeting a year ago but the OAG refrained from opening an investigation that time, Keystone-ATS reported.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists killed of over 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas and other terror groups also took 251 hostages into Gaza.
Destruction is pictured in al-Shoka, east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on January 21, 2025 (Bashar TALEB / AFP)
The subsequent war has leveled much of Gaza, and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 46,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
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