TEHRAN: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that a war crimes case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Gaza war was insufficient and that he deserved a “death sentence” because of his war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon.
In his first remarks since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu last week, Khamenei told a Tehran meeting that it was “not enough”.
“What the Zionist regime did in Gaza and Lebanon is not a victory, it is a war crime. The arrest warrant is not enough,” Khamenei said as quoted by the official IRNA news agency.
The ICC’s judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for using starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally attacking civilians in the Gaza Strip.
“They issued an arrest warrant for him, it’s not enough,” said Khamenei, speaking to a group from the Basij paramilitary force which is linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
“The death sentence of these criminal leaders should be issued,” said Khamenei.
READ ALSO: Iran Getting Ready to Respond Against Israel
The judges of The Hague-based ICC can order prison terms of up to 30 years and under exceptional circumstances life sentences. The court cannot issue death sentences.
The pre-trial arrest warrant theoretically limits Netanyahu’s movement, as any of the court’s 124 member states would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.
The court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan urged national members to act on the warrants, and for non-members — a category that includes Israel, Iran, the United States, China and others — to work together in “upholding international law”.
Khamenei told the Basij paramilitaries that Iranian forces, which have largely avoided direct involvement in the ongoing regional conflict, “will eventually destroy the Zionist regime”.
