Criminal court to probe Taliban, ISIS crimes

Doaa Emam

Afghanistan’s recent history is littered with human rights abuses and war crimes.

The sorry thing is that it is difficult to effectively investigate these abuses and hold the people believed to be involved in them to account.

In 2010, thousands of secret war documents released by the international nonprofit, WikiLeaks, instigated calls for bringing war criminals from the Taliban to justice.

These calls were based on the fact that Taliban fighters had become more daring in their systematic killing of civilians, a war crime according to international conventions and norms.

War crimes investigated

The new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, announced this month that his court would reopen investigations into the crimes committed by the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan, which is known by the name Khorasan Province.

Recent developments in Afghanistan and the change of national authorities, he said, represent a significant change in circumstances.

“After careful review, I have come to the conclusion that, at this point, there is no longer any possibility of genuine and effective internal investigations,” Khan said.

He noted that the limited resources of the International Criminal Court caused the investigations into war crimes committed by the Taliban and the Khorasan Province to be limited.

Khan indicated that the investigation would not include any practices carried out by US forces throughout their presence in Afghanistan.

He attributed this decision to the dangers, scale and continuing nature of alleged crimes by the Taliban and ISIS and the need to establish credible cases that can be proven beyond reasonable doubt in court.

Frequent violations

Afghan affairs specialists say this is not the first time the International Criminal Court opens investigations into alleged crimes by the Taliban.

The court had previously also accused the movement of committing crimes.

The US and the UK accused the movement of suppressing journalists, violating human rights and harassing women, since taking over the whole of Afghanistan months ago.

In March 2020, the International Criminal Court reported that prosecutors had been given the green light to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and abroad.

These crimes are linked to Afghans, the Taliban and US forces.

The court said this decision was made unanimously after an appeal by judges in The Hague, and an earlier ruling was overturned.