Amal Clooney was among a group of lawyers based in the U.K. to advise the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor in issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh.
Prosecutor Karim Khan said on Monday that the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant would be in relation to war crimes committed in Gaza, while the warrants for the Hamas leaders would be issued in connection to the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel and the subsequent treatment of those taken hostage, as noted by The Daily Beast.
“The Panel . . . unanimously agrees that the evidence presented by the prosecutor provides reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Israel’s minister of defence Yoav Gallant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Clooney and other legal advisers wrote in an op-ed published by the Financial Times.
Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney, is an accomplished human rights lawyer — as one X/Twitter user noted, she has been since “before George came along.” Comedians Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler memorably jested at Clooney’s legal and ethical accomplishments being overshadowed by her husband’s celebrity status at the 2015 Golden Globes awards.
“Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected for a three-person UN commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza strip,” Fey said. “So tonight her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.”