THE HAGUE The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court announced on Thursday that he had requested arrest warrants for two Taliban officials in Afghanistan, including Haibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme spiritual leader, charging them with crimes against humanity for their pervasive discrimination against women and girls.
Evidence gathered during investigations gave reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the chief justice since 2021, “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds,” according to a statement released by the office of chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
In addition to Afghan women and girls, they are “criminally liable for persecuting those who the Taliban believed did not fit their ideological standards of gender identity or expression.
