The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued two arrest warrants for the “supreme leader” of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada, and the terrorists’ top judge Abdul Hakim Haqqani on Tuesday in response to the Taliban’s systematic abuse and repression of women and girls, which the court deemed a crime against humanity.
The Taliban has ruled as the uncontested government of Afghanistan since August 15, 2021, when its jihadists stormed the capital of Kabul and sent then-President Ashraf Ghani fleeing. The Taliban takeover followed a decision by then-President Joe Biden to violate an agreement brokered by predecessor Donald Trump that would have seen U.S. forces withdraw from the country on May 1 of that year; the violation prompted the Taliban to launch a wave of tens of thousands of attacks on the U.S.-backed government that resulted in the collapse of the nation’s armed forces and the fall of Kabul.
The Taliban regime has prioritized erasing women and girls from society, banning them from leaving their homes as soon as they took over and increasingly stripping them of rights, including the rights to education, freedom of movement, free expression, and even Islamic prayer. Afghan women have consistently defied Taliban terrorists by staging protests nationwide, but the ruling regime has responded by increasingly restricting the right of girls and women to simply exist.
The United Nations estimated in August that at least 1.4 million girls had lost access to secondary education since the Taliban took over in 2021. Human rights groups documented a significant spike in femicide, defined as “intentional killing with a gender-related motivation,” since the Taliban seized power.
“It is very bad to see women in some areas, and our scholars also agree that women’s faces should be hidden,” Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue spokesman Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif told the Associated Press in August 2023. “It’s not that her face will be harmed or damaged. A woman has her own value and that value decreases by men looking at her. Allah gives respect to females in hijab and there is value in this.”
The Taliban went further in December, banning women from existing inside their homes if they were too close to a window where a man in public may catch a glimpse of them.
“Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” the Taliban decree claimed.
The ICC specified in its statement confirming the issuance of arrest warrants that the two Taliban leaders are reasonably suspected of having committed crimes against humanity. The ICC is a global tribunal with jurisdiction to prosecute only three categories of crime: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The court found that the Taliban leaders may reasonably be tried for persecution, a crime against humanity, “on gender grounds against girls, women and other persons non-conforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender, gender identity or expression; and on political grounds against persons perceived as ‘allies of girls and women.’”
“Specifically, the Taliban severely deprived, through decrees and edicts, girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life,” the court explained, “and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion.”
“In addition, other persons were targeted because certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity were regarded as inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender,” it added.
The court has kept the warrants themselves sealed to protect the identities of those testifying before the court, offering enough evidence to allow for the warrants to be issued.
The court issuing the warrants is separate from the ICC prosecutor’s office. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan first requested the warrants in January; he has since been put on leave after allegations surfaced that he had engaged in sexual harassment of an ICC employee. His office nonetheless applauded the warrants on Tuesday “an important vindication and acknowledgement of the rights of Afghan women and girls.”
“Through the Taliban’s deprivation of fundamental rights to education, privacy and family life, among others, Afghan women and girls were increasingly erased from public life,” the prosecutor’s office observed. “The decision of the judges of the ICC affirms that their rights are valuable, and that their plight and voices matter.”
The Taliban responded on Tuesday with expected disgust, dismissing the “so-called International Criminal Court” as an Islamophobic entity spread “enmity and hatred.”
“We do not recognize any entity under the title of the ‘International Criminal Court,’ nor do we acknowledge any obligation toward it,” Taliban top spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a formal response.
“Labeling the laws of Islamic Sharia as oppressive or against humanity, and threatening those who implement them with arrest and prosecution,” he continued, “is a clear expression of enmity and hatred toward the pure religion of Islam and its legal system, and it is an insult to the beliefs of all Muslims.”
Notably, the Taliban spokesman did not deny the allegations in the ICC’s statements, but rather condemned the ICC for identifying the repressive behaviors listed as crimes rather than accepting them as a legitimate interpretation of the Islamic law, or sharia.
Mujahid also complained that the ICC was targeting Taliban oppressors while the “Israeli Zionist regime and its foreign supporters” continued to engage in defense operations against the genocidal jihadists of Hamas, which the Taliban openly supports. Absent from the Taliban statement was the fact that the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in May 2024.
The Taliban had similarly attacked the ICC in January, when Khan first announced he would pursue arrest warrants for the terrorist group’s leaders, calling the request “duplicitous in nature and politically motivated” and suggesting the ICC prosecute Israeli and American politicians. The terrorists ultimately withdrew Afghanistan from the Rome Statute, the international legal document that created the ICC, in February. Only nations that are signatories to the Rome Statute are bound by international law to obey the requests of the court.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as an entity that defends the religious and national values of the Afghan people under Islamic sharia,” the Taliban said at the time, “does not recognize any obligations to the Rome Statute or the institution established based on it called the International Criminal Court.”
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