Why The ICC Is The World’s Biggest Joke

Never before in world history have there been so many sitting heads of state with active warrants for their arrest issued by the International Criminal Court or ICC. President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Supreme Leader Hibula Akenada of Afghanistan all have active wars for their arrest over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity issued by the ICC, obliging all 125 Member states who are party to the court to arrest these leaders if they ever step foot on their territory. And soon a fourth currently sitting head of state is likely to

have an arrest warrant issued for him as well. Acting President Minong Clay of Myanmar whose arrest warrant has already been requested by the ICC's chief prosecutor and will likely be formally issued shortly. So let's get in how all of these leaders have found themselves in this position And how the hunt for all of their arrests have been progressing. Establishing an international court to charge political leaders accused of committing international crimes was first proposed in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference following the First World War. But no concrete steps towards actually setting one up came until

after the end of the Second World War when the victorious Allied powers established two ad hoc criminal tribunals to prosecute The former leaders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for war crimes. Carl Durnets, the former chief of the German Naval High Command, who briefly served as Nazi Germany's head of state for about a month following Hitler's suicide, was technically the first former head of state to be formally charged by an international court for war crimes and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Three former Japanese prime ministers were also indicted for war Crimes during the

international military tribunal for the Far East. Hideki Tojo, prime minister between 1941 and 1944, and Kokihiro, prime minister between 1936 and 1937, were both sentenced by the court to death. Whiuma Kiuchiro, who served as Japan's prime minister briefly for 7 months in 1939, was sentenced to life in prison. For a long time, these were the only former heads of state to ever be formally charged with international crimes by an international Court. Because the onset of the Cold War and the global rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union eliminated any prospect at further global cooperation

on ever setting up another international court. In 1989, near the end of the cold war, however, the then prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago brought up the idea of creating a permanent international criminal court again. And in response, the UN General Assembly initiated the process of drafting up a statute for One. But in the meantime, while that work was still going on, two major global crises that involved the crime of genocide erupted in the 1990s. In the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, both of which were serious enough that the United Nations Security Council established two

more ad hoc criminal tribunals for them that were the first ones of their kind established since the 1940s. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or The ICTY was established in 1993 and was tasked with prosecuting war crimes committed throughout the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. 161 people would ultimately be indicted by this ad hoc court that included a wide range of people from common foot soldiers to generals and even heads of state. Very notably, Slobon Mallosvich, the president of Serbia and the Afar Yugoslavia at the time, became the very first sitting head of

state to ever be Indicted by an international criminal court for war crimes by the ICTY in 1999 during the middle of the Kosovo War, where his leadership was alleged by the court to have been responsible for the killings of up to 9,000 Kosvar Albanian civilians, the destruction of entire villages, and the forceful displacement of nearly a million Kosvar Albanians from their homes and out of the country in an attempt attempt to ethnically cleanse Kosovo and preserve Serbia's Demographic hold over the territory. Mallosvich was eventually overthrown the next year by a revolution in 2000 and subsequently

arrested by Yugoslav authorities and deported to the Netherlands to stand trial in front of the ICTY for his crimes. But he died there in prison in 2006 while his trial was still ongoing. Other former heads of state of partially recognized states who were also indicted by the ICTY included Milan Babage, the former president of The self-declared Republic of Serbian Crya in Croatia, who was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2004 and sentenced to 13 years in prison along with Ratavan Kerajik, the former president of the self-declared Bosnian Serb Republic of Serpska in

Bosnia, who remained a wanted fugitive for years until he was eventually caught and arrested in Serbia in 2008 and extradited to the Netherlands. to stand trial. Carajic notably was found guilty Of the crime of genocide for the events that took place in Seanita in 1995 where the Bosnian Serb army systematically massacred more than 8,000 Bosnjak men and boys over just a few days which the ICTY later legally defined as the first genocide to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War. Kerajek was eventually sentenced by the court to 40 years in prison for

his role in the massacre in 2016 which he attempted to appeal which was rejected and led to a Sentence being escalated to life in prison instead. The United Nations Security Council also established another ad hoc criminal tribunal for Rwanda in 1994. then investigated genocide allegations committed there during the 100-day period between April and July of that year where a radical HOU extremist regime in power systematically annihilated more than a million people in the country including up to 800,000 ethnic tootssis who were The regime's primary targets. The highest ranking HOU government official that was captured and

charged by this ad hoc criminal tribunal was Jean Kamb who had served as Rwanda's prime minister and head of state for the entirety of the 100 days where an almost unbelievable 1 million people were killed. Overseeing the entirety of the regime's campaign of annihilation against the Tootsies once he was overthrown in July of 1994. Kamba Initially fled the country, but he was caught and apprehended three years later in 1997 in Kenya and extradited to stand trial. He notably became the first and so far only former head of state to actually plead guilty to the criminal

charge of genocide, for which he was sentenced to life in prison in 1998, where he's remained ever since. The horrors that took place in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda during the 1990s highlighted to many the pressing need to Finally establish a permanent international criminal court to handle these kind of things in the future. And so finally in 1998, the UN General Assembly held a conference in Rome that finalized the treaty that created the International Criminal Court by a vote of 120 to7 with the seven countries who voted against its adoption at the time being China,

the United States, Israel, Saddam's Iraq, Gaddafi's Libya, Qatar, and Yemen. Notably, Israel very publicly Voted against the adoption of the ICC because it included in its list of prosecutable war crimes the action of transferring population into occupied territory, which Israel at that time was already actively doing in the occupied West Bank in Gaza. Regardless, the UN General Assembly voted to endorse the ICC in both 1999 and then again in 2000. And so, the ICC finally legally entered into force in the summer of 2002. It should be noted at this point that the ICC is a

distinct organization from the International Court of Justice or the ICJ which hears and judges on disputes between states. By contrast, the ICC is the first and only permanent international court that has jurisdiction to prosecute individual people for international crimes like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. As of the end of 2024, 125 UN member states have joined with The ICC and formally recognized the court's authority. Although a number of very important countries have never joined and have never recognized the core, including the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and

virtually all of the Arab world. The ICC began issuing out their first arrest warrants a few years later in 2005. But the first time that the court issued an arrest warrant for an actual sitting head of state wouldn't come until 2009 When the court decided to indict Sudan's then sitting president Omar al-Bashir for war crimes he was allegedly responsible for in Darfur. Darfur is a large region in western Sudan that is highly ethnically diverse with large populations of Sudanese Arabs who are largely nomadic and indigenous largely settled subsaharan African people like the fur masselate and

sagawa people. In 2003, armed militant rebel factions in Darur composed of the subsaharan Minority groups rose up in a rebellion across the region against the Sudanese government, accusing it of long-standing policies of oppressing the non-Arab population in Darur. The Sudin government responded to this rebellion with a crackdown in Darfur and began arming and supporting local Arab militias in the region that came to be called the Janjawid to suppress the non-Arab rebels. Catastrophic levels of violence ensued in Darfur and it's been Estimated by the UN that over just the next two years between 2003 and 2005

around 200,000 people were killed in Darfur with the overwhelming majority perpetrated by the state sponsored Janjoui militias. All of this is what resulted in the ICC deciding to formally indict Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir with charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2009 followed by another separate warrant issued in 2010 that charged Albashir with genocide in Darur as well making Albashir the first sitting head of state to ever be charged by an international court with a crime of genocide. What followed was years and years of drama and controversy. Omar al-bashir himself insisted that fewer

than 10,000 people were actually killed in Darfur during the conflict and that the UN and the US and other countries had grossly exaggerated the death toll in order to smear him as the conflict in Darfur was still ongoing. The US Government formally declared that the Janjid and the Sudin government were guilty of committing genocide there in 2004. But to date the US government is the only government in the world that has ever taken that position. The UN took the position that while the Janjid carried out mass murder and multiple war crimes in Darur, no systematic

genocide took place there. The African Union adopted a similar position while Doctors Without Borders, one of the world's Largest NOS's, argued that calling the events in Darur a genocide was inappropriate, arguing that while mass killings did happen, there was never any systematic targeting of one ethnic group over another one. Nonetheless, the ICC's chief prosecutor accused Albashir of bearing personal criminal responsibility for the crime of genocide in Darthur with the intent to destroy the territo's three main subsaharan African groups, which was supported by the United States, NATO, and Amnesty International. But several other countries and organizations

around the world condemned the warrants for Albashir and accused them of being politically motivated by the West. The African Union, the Arab League, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation all condemned the ICC arrest warrants for Albashir. While they and Albashir himself accused the ICC of having a pro-western bias, indicting him for crimes that took place in Darur While ignoring crimes that took place during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Israel's continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. Mumar Gaddafi, the dictator of Libya for nearly 40 years by this point, even went so far as

to label the ICC's warrant for Albashir as an act of terrorism. And as fate would have it, Gaddafi himself shortly ended up becoming the second sitting head of state to have an arrest warrant issued for him by the ICC in 2011. over his harsh response to the Libyan revolution against his government that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths in the country. The ICC issued an arrest warrant for him in June of 2011 over alleged war crimes he was responsible for committing in Libya against his own people. But he was overthrown, captured, and brutally murdered by

the Libyan rebels just a few months later in October, which led to the arrest warrant being quickly Terminated before it could ever be executed. The ICC's decision to issue another warrant for Gaddafi's arrest only further enraged the communities in Africa and the Arab world. Though in 2013, multiple African countries began accusing the ICC of bias and racism. Because up until that point, since the court's establishment 11 years previously in 2002, they'd only ever indicted suspects in Africa alone and literally nowhere else, leading to Further accusations that the court was simply ignoring crimes committed by Western

leaders. The first time that the ICC would ever indict people for crimes outside of Africa wouldn't happen all the way up until 2022, 20 years after the court's initial establishment, when they indicted three men from the breakaway, partially recognized state of South Oedia for alleged war crimes relating to their treatments of ethnically Georgian Civilians during the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. Meanwhile, Omar al-Bashir continued remaining the president of Sudan for another decade after his arrest warrant was issued by the ICC in 2009, and he technically continues to remain a wanted fugitive by the court

to this very day. Sudan has never been a member of the ICC and has never recognized the court's authority. So, the country would never just depose their own president and extradite him to The Netherlands to stand trial. But al-Bashir also kept continually taking international visits abroad while he had multiple active arrest warrants issued for him as well which led to a lot of very significant controversy. After the arrest warrants were issued for him including for genocide in Darur. Albashir took official state visits to China, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United

Arab Emirates. None of which were Members of the ICC either and so made no attempts to arrest him while he was there. But he also visited many other countries that actually were members of the ICC too, including Chad, Nigeria, Jordan, Kenya, South Africa, and Djibouti. All of whom refused to perform their duties as members of the ICC by having him arrested while he was present on their territory, which severely undermined the ICC's legitimacy. After he visited Kenya in 2011, the government Simply declared that he'd be arrested if he ever visited Kenya again in the future.

The situation of his frequent flaunting visits to ICC member states across Africa and their consistent refusals to ever arrest him frustrated the ICC so much that they eventually declared that they could have his presidential plane intercepted by fighter jets while it was flying over international airspace and escorted away which then led to Albashir always flying In his plane with his own fighter jet escorts to prevent that from ever happening. Albashir was eventually overthrown by a military coup d'etan Sudan in 2019 after 30 continuous years in power. And although the new Sudin government that replaced him

initially promised to extradite him to stand trial before the ICC, that still hasn't happened yet 6 years later. Albashir was convicted of corruption at Sudin courts in 2019 and imprisoned shortly after he Was overthrown, where he's remained ever since. He is currently 81 years old and still wanted by the ICC to stand trial for war crimes and genocide that he is allegedly responsible for that took place in Darur between 2003 and 2005. And this leads us up to the third sitting head of state that the ICC would eventually issue an arrest warrant for, President Vladimir

Putin of Russia in 2023. Putin has dominated Russian politics for the entirety of the 21st Century. Except for a brief stint as the country's prime minister between 2008 and 2012. Putin has continually served as Russia's president and head of state ever since 2000. Putin led Russia into multiple wars in Cheschna, Georgia, and Syria. But it was Putin's biggest war in Ukraine that earned him the arrest warrant by the ICC. After ordering limited invasions of Ukraine in 2014 that resulted in Russia seizing Crimea and pro-Russian separatists taking over A swath of territory in the Donbass region,

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that was launched in early 2022. Since then, Russian forces have occupied roughly 20% of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory and have unilaterally declared to have annexed five of Ukraine's provinces. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have likely been killed as a result of the war, and there have been multiple instances of severe war crimes committed All throughout it. For the alleged war crime of intentionally directing military attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine, the ICC issued arrest warrants for many highranking Russian military officers, including Victor Sokalov, the former commander of the

Russian Black Sea Fleet, who may have already been killed during Ukrainian missile attack. Sergey Kabilash, the commander of the Russian Air Force. Sergey Shuyu, the former Russian defense minister between 2012 and 2024, and Valeri Garasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces and the supreme commander of all Russian forces in Ukraine. But Putin himself wasn't issued an arrest warrant by the ICC for any of these war crimes. Instead, Putin's ICC arrest warrant was issued over his alleged responsibility in the mass deportations of potentially tens to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Children

away from the Russian occupied territories into Russia itself with a dual arrest warrant issued for the same charge to his commissioner for children's rights in Russia, Maria Lavova Bova. It's not entirely clear how many children from Ukraine that Russia has deported from the territories it's occupied and the estimates are pretty much all over the place. A minimum of 19,500 Ukrainian children who have been Deported into Russia since the invasion began have been firmly identified by name by Yo University. While estimates for the true numbers of children taken range up to more than 100,000 and even

more than 240,000 by other sources. It's been theorized that Russian forces have been taking so many children from Ukraine in order to erase their identities and to raise them as Russians instead in an attempt to bolster Russia's own catastrophic birth rates And their ongoing casualties in Ukraine. The return of all these missing children has since become a central component of Ukraine's demands for peace in the war. But to date, only a handful of them have actually ever been returned. around 1,300 across several deals that were brokered by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and the Vatican.

As you can imagine, these alleged mass deportations of potentially hundreds of thousands of children away from Ukraine violate Multiple international laws and constitute serious war crimes, potentially even including genocide. While not yet widely recognized as such, Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine has been formally recognized as genocidal in intent by the governments of Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latafia, Lithuania, Czecha, Ireland, and Canada. The ICC's arrest warrant they issued for Vladimir Putin also marked the first time that an international arrest warrant had ever Been issued for the head of state of a permanent UNC member armed with nuclear

weapons. And just like there was with the ICC's previous arrest warrants issued for Libya's Gaddafi and Sudan's Albashir, there has been a very high degree of controversy surrounding Putin's arrest warrant as well. Mrearely months after it was issued, Brazil's president Luis Inosio Lula Dilva invited Putin to attend the upcoming BRICS and G20 summits in the country. But after he Clarified that Putin could still be arrested, he never ended up showing up to them. Since the arrest warrant was issued, Putin, like Albashir did before him, has visited multiple countries abroad, including a few ICC members. He

has taken official state visits to China, North Korea, Vietnam, Turkmanistan, Kyrgystan, Usbekiststan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Belleris since the warrant was issued. But all of These visits were very deliberate because none of them are ICC member states. And so Putin knew that he had very little to fear by visiting any of them. However, controversy erupted when South Africa invited Putin to attend the 15th annual brick summit of leaders in the country a few months after the arrest warrant was issued. South Africa, if you remember, has been a member of the

ICC since the court's establishment, and they had already drawn the court's Eye once when they welcomed wanted war criminal Omar Albashir to the country a decade earlier back in 2015 and refused to arrest him while he was there. Putin would be the second sitting head of state with an active ICC arrest warrant to visit South Africa and people were pissed about it. The South African government declared that they would be granting Putin and his staff full diplomatic immunity to attend the event despite the ICC arrest warrant obliging The government to arrest him. An internal dispute

within the country emerged when the premier of the Western Cape province criticize the ruling government for inviting Putin to the country and said that he would have the province's local police arrest and extradite Putin instead if he were to visit the Western Cape. But in the end, Putin ultimately declined to visit South Africa despite the government's assurances. Instead, he strategically Chose his first ICC member state to visit very carefully the following year in 2024 when that summer the Russian government announced that Putin was going to visit Mongolia, which is also an ICC member state. This

was very deliberate because Putin almost certainly knew that Mongolia would never dare actually try and arrest him. Mongolia is landlocked and surrounded by Russia and China on all of its sides. Russia's population is nearly 50 times Larger than Mongolia's is. While Russia provides 90% of Mongolia's oil supply, 30% of its electricity supply, and 27% of its food supply. If Mongolia tried to arrest Putin while he was there, there would be a real threat that Mongolia would effectively just cease existing. Even if they did manage to successfully arrest him, there's no clear way how they would

even extradite him out to stand trial in the Netherlands since any aircraft carrying him would have to fly Over either Russian or Chinese airspace and would almost certainly be intercepted. Despite all of this, the ICC in Ukraine both still urged Mongolia to uphold its obligations as a member of the court by enforcing the warrant and arresting Putin while he was there. But Putin was correct in his calculus. He arrived in September of 2024 for a lavish two-day visit and was not arrested by Mongolian authorities. And as a result, Putin was able to deal Another blow

to the ICC's legitimacy and authority and set a precedent that he can still visit ICC member states without them actually arresting him. The warrant for his arrest, as well as the massive abductions of children from Ukraine that he is accused of being responsible for, are both still active and ongoing. This then brings us to the fourth ever sitting head of state to have an arrest warrant issued for them by the ICC and the second currently Serving head of state to have an active warrant. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Netanyahu has dominated Israeli politics for

decades and is the country's longest ever serving prime minister. He first served as prime minister between 1996 and 1999. And except for a brief 18-month absence between 2021 and 2022, he has continually served as Israel's prime minister since 2009 up to the present day. Thus, he has personally overseen Most of Israel's policies towards the occupied Palestinian territories for decades now. as well. Under Netanyahu's leadership, Israel's grip over the occupied West Bank in particular has significantly tightened in what many experts have labeled a creeping annexation. The number of Israeli settlers and the occupied West Bank nearly

doubled under his watch between 2009 and 2024. Dozens of additional new illegal settlements were approved, and His government has frequently proposed outright annexing either parts or the entirety of the West Bank as well. All of which has been in blatant violation of the fourth Geneva Convention, which clearly states that transfers of civilian populations into militarily occupied territories constitute war crimes. Netanyahu has also overseeing the majority of Israel's near total blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been ongoing since Hamas forcefully Seized power there in 2007. His policies towards Gaza effectively transformed the territory into the

world's largest open air prison for the roughly 2 million Palestinians who live there, which led to multiple conflicts between Israel and Gaza breaking out in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 that all resulted in disproportionately more Gazin fatalities than Israeli. Netanyahu's policies effectively and deliberately made the two-state solution impossible. And Despite the repeated war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel was accused of committing in the West Bank and Gaza, no ICC investigations were ever launched against Israel for years, which like I already said led to huge amounts of controversy and accusations of double standards and

pro-western bias by countries throughout Africa and the Muslim world. Finally, the ICC eventually announced at the end of 2019 that it was opening an investigation Into war crimes taking place in the Palestinian territories by members of the IDF, Hamas, and other Palestinian armed groups dating back to 2014. And then, of course, came the dramatic escalation of the Israel Gaza conflict in 2023. On October 7th of that year, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched a major attack on Israel that killed 1,195 Israelis and other foreign nationals in the process, including 815 civilians. Hamas also seized

another 251 other civilians and soldiers and took them back to Gaza as hostages, at least 74 of whom have since been killed as well. Israel responded to the attack by formally declaring war on Hamas and launched a full-scale invasion of its own into the Gaza Strip with the officially stated goal of removing Hamas from power there. Since then, it has transformed into one of the deadliest and most destructive conflicts of the Entire 21st century and has led to accusations that Israel has responded with genocidal levels of retaliation. A minimum of 73,000 Palestinians have likely been

killed in Gaza since Israel began its attacks immediately after the October 7th attack. While other reliable estimates go up to more than 80,000 fatalities with around 59% of them consisting of women, children, and the elderly, suggesting a very high civilian death toll. Gaza itself has been almost Completely leveled and rendered uninhabitable by the overwhelming Israeli aerial bombardments of the territory with Doctors Without Borders estimating at the beginning of 2025 that 92% of all the houses in Gaza along with 70% of all of the buildings have been either destroyed or damaged. A level of destruction that

is comparable to what the German city of Dresden experienced during the Second World War. Virtually the entirety of Gaza's population has Been forcefully displaced by the war. While the increased tightening of Israel's blockade of Gaza, including against the entry of nearly all humanitarian aid, has led to the onset of catastrophic famine conditions appearing in Gaza as well, threatening at least a million Palestinians or more in Gaza with a severe risk of starvation. This level of devastation inflicted upon Gaza has been so catastrophic that South Africa filed a Case with the ICJ accusing Israel of committing

genocide in the territory. Dozens of countries from around the world have since joined on with South Africa's accusations in the case while Israel itself has counter claimed that they are still to this day waging a war of self-defense against Hamas and Gaza. While the US, UK, Germany, Czecha, Hungary, Italy, Guatemala, and Paraguay have all firmly taken Israel's side and condemned South Africa's genocide case. Many of the world's largest NOS's have also concluded that Israel is actively committing genocide in Gaza as well, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders. In November of

2024, after almost 5 years worth of investigations that began in 2019, the ICC formally issued its arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's former defense minister Yoav Galant, alleging each of Their personal responsibilities for utilizing the war crime of starvation as a deliberate method of war in Gaza, along with various other crimes against humanity targeted towards civilians during the course of the conflict. The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for war crimes relating to the October 7th attack for Muhammad Div as well. Hamas's chief military commander in Gaza, but he was

later killed during an Israeli air strike, and so the warrant was Subsequently withdrawn. The warrant for Netanyahu very notably marked the first time that the ICC had ever issued an arrest warrant for war crimes for a sitting head of state from a major westernbacked country, which as you can probably expect has been met with condemnation from both Israel and the United States, neither of whom have ever been members of the court in the first place. And like Putin and Albashir before him, having an active ICC arrest Warrant in place has not deterred Netanyahu from continuing

to travel abroad either. Netanyahu has visited the United States no less than three times since his arrest warrant was issued by the court. Confident that as a non-member of the ICC, the US would never actually apprehend him, but he has also taken some very controversial trips to countries who are members of the ICC as well. A few months after his warrant was issued, the prospect of him visiting Poland in January of 2025 for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Ashvitz was raised by Polish politicians. despite Poland being a member of the ICC and having

a legal obligation to arrest him if he actually attended. A few weeks before the anniversary, the Polish government released a statement clarifying that it would guarantee the free and secure participation to the ceremony to the highest representatives of Israel, which Poland's head of state, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said he interpreted as meaning that Israel's prime minister would not be arrested if he attended. without naming Netanyahu by name. Furious, the ICC once again reiterated, as it had done with Putin when he was preparing to visit Mongolia, that Poland bore an obligatory legal responsibility as a member

of the court to arrest Netanyahu if he actually arrived on Polish soil. In the end, Netanyahu didn't attend the event and Never visited Poland, which left the argument moot. But then just a few months later in April of 2025, Netanyahu actually did take a personal visit to ICC member state Hungary after being invited to come by Hungary's Prime Minister Victor Orban, who promised that the ICC arrest warrant would not be enforced on Hungarian territory. In the leadup to this visit, legal teams began calling for injunctions to prevent Netanyahu from being able to fly to Hungary

through the airspaces of other European ICC members and to possibly arrest Netanyahu in the event that he landed in any other states besides Hungary. Nonetheless, Netanyahu safely arrived in Hungary for his visit without any incidents. And while he was there, Victor Orban declared that Hungary would simply be withdrawing from the ICC altogether in order to avoid its legal responsibilities. Notably making Hungary the first European country to withdraw From the ICC, where it will soon only be one of three countries on the continent to not be members alongside of Russia and Belleris. All of this has

presented a serious problem of legitimacy for the ICC. What good is the court if even its own members routinely ignore its arrest warrants in favor of their own individual geopolitical considerations? Obar al-bashir visited Chad, Nigeria, Jordan, Kenya, South Africa, and Djibouti while wanted for genocide in Darur. Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia while wanted for abducting children from Ukraine. And Benjamin Netanyahu visited Hungary while wanted for using starvation tactics in Gaza. and none of them were ever arrested, setting multiple precedents for wanted world leaders to continue visiting ICC members with impunity. Then just a few months before

I made this video in early 2025, the ICC issued another arrest warrant for a third currently sitting head of State as well. This time for Hibatula Akenada, the leader of the Taliban since 2016 and the Supreme Leader of Afghanistan since the Taliban retook power in the country again in 2021. An extremely reclusive character, there's almost no known digital footprint that exists of Bakanada at all. Most of what is known about him internationally only comes from select audio recordings of his speeches that have been released by the Taliban. The only potential Photograph that is known to

exist of him is this one. An unverified photo released by the Taliban that was allegedly taken for his passport photo decades ago all the way back in 1990, which they say is of Hibula Azada, but nobody is really certain. After retaking power in Afghanistan in mid 2021 after a 20-year absence caused by the US invasion and occupation, Aken Zada effectively became the country's new absolute ruler, who implemented a Totalitarian Islamist regime that's unique in the world for the scope of its oppression and its brutality. Under Akenzada's direct orders and edicts since then, women and girls

have been systematically stripped in Afghanistan of virtually all of their human rights over the past four years. Afghan women and girls have been banned from receiving any education beyond the sixth grade and have been completely blocked out from all universities in the Country. The only restriction of its kind anywhere in the world today. Women have been completely barred from nearly all forms of paid employment in the country. While they've also been mandated to wear full body and face coverings at all times while out in public as well. In terms of freedom of movement, women in

Afghanistan have been completely forbidden to leave their homes and travel anywhere alone. and they've been prohibited from traveling Any further than 70 kilometers away from their home without a close male relative directly accompanying them. These restrictions are so strict that women are not even allowed to go outside for a walk or to exercise if they're not directly accompanied by someone else. Azada has even gone so far as to issue decrees banning women from being heard reciting, singing, or reading out loud while in public or from even singing in the comfort of their own homes if

they Could be heard by a stranger outside. Akenzada also re-imposed mandatory punishments of flogging and stoning to death for women convicted of adultery in the country. All beauty salons in Afghanistan have been forcefully shut down and women have even been banned from all access to the country's parks and gyms as well. Perhaps most frustratingly, Aenzada decreed at the end of 2024 that women were to be banned from being trained in nursing and Midwifery as well, which up until then had been granted a limited exception from the general ban on all women's education in the country.

This is particularly problematic in Afghanistan because women are also generally forbidden from receiving any medical treatment from male health care professionals who are not their own close family relatives. With a new ban on women receiving nursing and midwife free training as well, that basically Means that all women's access to all forms of health care have effectively been completely shut down in Afghanistan, which is already leading to disastrous consequences for women's mortality rates there. All of this has led to an enormous amount of international criticism of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by outside countries and organizations

from all around the world, including from throughout the Muslim world, where many Are eager to point out that the Taliban's draconian laws against women have no basis in the Islamic faith. Many scholars of international law, including Amnesty International and the UN, have described the Taliban's discriminatory laws in Afghanistan as a unique form of gender aparthide, one that has systematically segregated men and women into separate classes and undermined nearly all internationally recognized human rights of women. Since 2023, the UN has repeatedly labeled Afghanistan as the most repressive country in the world for women. Over the summer

of 2025, the ICC issued its arrest warrant for Hibutula Akenzada for crimes against humanity relating to his regime's persecution of Afghan women and girls by depriving them of their freedom of movement, the rights to control their bodies, the rights to education, and the rights to a private and family life, obligating the members of the ICC around The world to arrest him if he ever enters onto their territory. But that's probably not very likely since unlike Netanyahu and Putin, Akenzada is not very well known for having ever left Afghanistan in his life. Afghanistan in theory joined

the ICC as a member state back when it had a puppet government in place propped up by the US occupation. But after the Taliban retook control of the country, they have since said that they reject the ICC's warrants and no Longer recognized the ICC's authority, meaning that Afghanistan has effectively withdrawn from the ICC in a deacto sense. So that's three currently sitting heads of state in Russia, Israel, and Afghanistan who are all currently wanted for arrest by the ICC for a variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A completely unprecedented situation in world history

that's never been seen before. And very shortly, this situation will get even more unprecedented when The ICC probably issues another currently pending arrest warrant for a fourth currently sitting head of state as well. Min clanging the acting president of Myanmar. Menon clanging is a lifetime military officer affiliated with the armed forces of Myanmar better known as the Toddmado who have largely governed Myanmar under an authoritarian military dictatorship for decades ever since the 1960s. Middle and clang rose through the ranks to become the leader Of the Tmmo by 2011 and it was under his leadership that

the Tmado launched a coup d'eta that forcefully overthrew Myanmar's democratically elected government in 2021. Minon Lang then installed himself as Myanmar's deacto head of state and acting president. And as pro-democracy protests broke out against him, he ordered a sharp military crackdown on them that resulted in hundreds of deaths and sparked an ongoing devastating civil war in Myanmar That has left tens of thousands of more people dead. Throughout the past four years of this civil war, Middleclang's forces have conducted almost countless air strikes against civilian targets all throughout the country and have repeatedly engaged in scorched

earth mass reprisals against entire communities in a carefully calibrated campaign of terror. He has personally ordered the executions of multiple prominent pro-democracy activists in Myanmar and reintroduced the death penalty for the first time in decades in order to carry them out. while the Economist's Democracy Index has ranked Myanmar under his regime as the second most totalitarian country in the world behind only the Taliban's Afghanistan. But none of those potential crimes are why the ICC has been working on issuing an arrest warrant for him. Instead, the pending warrant for his arrest dates back to even worse

alleged crimes that Took place between 2017 and 2018 in Myanmar's Rahine state that potentially includes charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Myanmar is an overwhelmingly Buddhist majority country that is dominated by the ethnic Bamar people. But the Rahin state is home to a significant ethnic minority known as the Rohinda who predominantly practice the Islamic faith. The Rohinda have thus been a heavily persecuted group within Myanmar by Buddhist nationalists and the Military for decades. Their citizenship in Myanmar was stripped by the Tombadoled government in 1982 which led to them becoming the largest stateless population on the

planet numbering around a million people. Harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement and their rights to education were imposed forcing most of them to live in squatter camps and slums which led multiple legal scholars including many from South Africa identifying the Conditions experienced by the Rohinda the Rahin state as tantamount to state imposed aparthide that lasted for decades. Tensions between the heavily disenfranchised Muslim Rohinda and the Buddhist majority in the Rahine state continued and the country's military launched no less than 13 armed campaigns against the Rohhena before the really big one came in the later

2010s. The UN labeled the Rohinda as one of the most heavily oppressed people on the planet. And so a number of armed Rohinda militant organizations have been formed to resist their oppression. In late 2016, one of these Rohinda militant organizations attacked several police stations in the Rahin state and killed 12 of the Tombado's police officers, which led to the Tmado under Minang's leadership and orders to respond with a level of overwhelming violence that has rarely been seen this century. Thousands of soldiers from the Tanmado came Storming into the Rohinda populated areas of the Rahin state

and burned down hundreds of Rohinda populated villages to the ground in their wake. Within only a matter of months, through multiple massacres and mass killings, the Tombado is believed by the UN to have killed between 25,000 and 43,000 Rohinda people and who have forcefully driven out more than 700,000 other Rohinda people across the border into Bangladesh, where they have been exiled ever since in the Largest single refugee camp on the planet. And this was all out of a population of only about 1.1 million Rohinda who lived in Myanmar before the crackdown. Implying that the Tanvado

killed as much as 4% of their entire population and forcefully drove another 70% of them out from their homes and out of the country leading to the multiple accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In 2018, the UN's independent international factf findfinding mission On Myanmar determined that Minonclang and the topau oversaw atrocities against the Rohinda people and that they did so with genocidal intent. The UN investigation further concluded that Minonclang along with four other senior Tomo military officers should be tried by either the ICC or by an international criminal tribunal for war crimes and crimes against

humanity in the Rahin state, including for genocide. Near the end of 2019, the Gambia on behalf of all 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation filed a case with the ICJ that accuses Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohinda, which has since been joined and supported by Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, the Malds, and Ireland. Notably, and importantly, in my opinion, Ireland decided to simultaneously join the international genocide cases against both Myanmar and Israel at the same Time. Later in November of 2024, the chief prosecutor of the ICC formally requested

that an arrest warrant be issued for Minong Clang over his responsibility in perpetrating the genocide of the Rahena. While the warrant is currently still pending when I made this video, it means that once it's likely confirmed very soon, there will be four currently sitting world leaders with active arrest warrants issued for them by the ICC, plus one Former world leader with an active arrest warrant still beyond the court's reach in Sudan. The hunt to find, arrest, and extradite all of them to the Netherlands to stand trial for the crimes they're all accused of will almost

certainly continue for the rest of all of their lives in the unprecedented times that we currently live in. The ICC is not an all powerful institution, however, and there are many other people who are likely guilty of Committing war crimes who the court will almost certainly never be able to charge, let alone try. This is especially the case of leaders in the western world and most prominently of all for former US President George W. Bush due to his role in leading the United States into the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Multiple legal scholars, human rights

organizations, and even some political leaders have called on the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Bush over The invasion. But it's never happened and probably never will for many reasons. Critics have long argued that America's invasion of Iraq in 2003 constituted the crime of aggression. the same as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is also one of the four core crimes placed under the ICC's jurisdiction. The UN Security Council never authorized America's invasion of the country. It was a preemptive war launched on flawed or incorrect Intelligence assessments and justifications which falsely alleged that Iraq possessed

weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda. And it led to enormous civilian casualties and decades of instability in the region. Depending on the source, the invasion led directly to the deaths of between 150,000 people and a minimum to more than a million, making it among the deadliest conflicts of the entire 21st century. However, neither the United States nor Iraq have ever been members of the ICC. The UN Security Council theoretically has the power to refer the case anyway, but since the US is a permanent member on the Security Council, it would always simply

veto it. Moreover, the ICC only gained its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression recently in 2018, and even then, still only for states who are ICC members or ICC members who are victims. Since the invasion of Iraq happened back In 2003, prosecuting Bush retroactively would be impossible under the current law. For similar reasons, Saddam Hussein was never prosecuted by an international tribunal or by the ICC either. The ICC only came into force in 2002, just a few months before Saddam was overthrown during the US invasion. And since Iraq was never a member of the court

either, no warrant for his arrest was ever issued. Despite this, the UN Security Council passed more than a dozen Resolutions during Saddam's time in power, condemning his various actions, like invading and conquering Kuwait, deploying chemical weapons, or waging a violent campaign of repression against Iraq's Kurdish minority that some organizations like Human Rights Watch have characterized as genocide. After Saddam was overthrown and captured in 2003, a lot of groups advocated for him to be tried at an international tribunal due to the international scope of his Crimes, which on top of the invasion of Kuwait and his

attacks on the Kurds, also included his previous invasion of Iran and his missile attacks on Israel. In the end, however, the US occupation government chose to try Saddam in a domestic Iraqi trial instead, which sentenced him to death a few years later in 2006. Now, you might already know a lot about Saddam and his prolific career committing crimes against humanity, but you might not know as much about his Son, Uday Hussein, who made his father look like a saint by comparison. U Hussein is, without exaggeration, among the darkest, most monstrous figures who has ever existed

in human history. Through his decades of almost absolute power in Iraq granted by his father, the thousands and thousands of serious crimes perpetrated by Uday piled up into making him potentially the most prolific serial killer that the world has ever known. The numbers of his personal Victims measure in the thousands and his crimes are so terrible that I can't even identify some of them without causing this entire video to become immediately demonetized. Nonetheless, I think that the true horrifying story of Uday Hussein should be better understood and highlighted since it is a major lesson in

how absolute power still corrupts absolutely in our modern world. And so I made an entire new documentary exploring the dark world and life of Uday Hussein In my brand new original documentary series that I'm calling Mad Kings, which will take deeper dives into the terrible personal lives and erratic decisions of recent unstable, eccentric, and darker dictators. Because of the inherently violent and controversial details surrounding all of this though, my documentary investigating the life of Ude Hussein would never work on YouTube because it would instantly become demonetized and age restricted, which Means that YouTube's algorithm, which

is based around showing you ads, would never be incentivized to actually show the video to you or to promote it. I deal with very large numbers of my videos on YouTube getting demonetized and age restricted as they are. And that's why I'll be uploading all of my documentaries in Mad Kings, including this one on Uday Hussein, exclusively to Nebula, and why signing up to Nebula is the absolute best thing that you can do To support me and my channel. And you'll also get access to way more content than just this new Mad King series as

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