The family of Palestinian activist Nizar Banat will submit a case Thursday to the International Criminal Court accusing top Palestinian officials of his death in custody, relatives told AFP.
Banat, a leading critic of the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, died in June 2021 after being dragged from his home in the West Bank by security forces. A post-mortem found he had been beaten on the head, chest, neck, legs and hands, with less than an hour elapsing between his arrest and death.
2 View gallery
Palestinian protesters rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah, denouncing the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the death of activist Nizar Banat while in the custody of PA security forces
(Photo: ABBAS MOMANI / AFP)
"We demand justice for a man who was doing nothing but speaking the truth to power," said the family's lawyer Hakan Camuz.
Any person or group can file a complaint to The Hague-based ICC prosecutor for investigation, but the court is not obliged to take them on.
The case lodged at ICC accuses seven Palestinian officials of responsibility for Banat's death. The decision to take the case to the ICC comes after 14 members of the Palestinian security forces were released on bail, pending their military trial in the West Bank over Banat's death.
Banat’s brother, Ghassan Banat, said their release earlier this year left him believing "there is no justice enforcement."
"At that time, we understood that the regime of the Palestinian Authority, the police, the security officers, have more authority than the court, that they were above the court," he said. "That is why we have decided to move on to the international arena."