Gaza, Palestine,
May 23, 2021 – The owner of the building which was vandalized in Gaza after the Israeli airstrike has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Jala Tower, which was bombed on May 15 housed the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera news network.
According to a statement seen by Nyamilepedia, the owner of the building identified as Jawad Mehdi, said, the flattening of his building amounts to a “war crime”.
He said he has mandated his lawyers to file a war crime complaint with the ICC. One of his lawyers, Gilles Devers, told reporters that Israel could show “no military objective” for the attack.
“We hear a lot that this tower could have been destroyed because there was equipment or an armed resistance team. This is something that we totally deny after studying the case,” Devers said.
The lawyer added how international law states that civilian property may be harmed only if it is used for military purposes, which was “not the case”. The complaint would be forwarded formally to the court by email on Friday.
After the attack, Israel claimed that Hamas military intelligence units were operating from the building. At the time, an Israeli intelligence officer told Mehdi that he had an hour to evacuate the building before a missile struck it.
Once complaints to ICC are submitted, it is not under any obligation to take all into consideration and can independently decide which cases to forward to court judges.
In a separate twist, the bombing of the tower has led to the Associated Press firing its reporter Emily Wilder. Wilder was accused of being pro-Palestinian even if that dates back to her days at a University.
However, the AP suspended Wilder on the claim that the reporter violated the company’s social media policy without stating a particular post.
An article published on The Washington Free Beacon days later reads, “AP Hires Anti-Israel Activist as News Associate. AP’s Objectivity in Question Amid Revelations it Shared Office Space with Hamas”.
