ICC unseals arrest warrants for Taliban supreme leader and chief justice

The International Criminal Court said on Monday it had unveiled arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban’s supreme spiritual leader, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, who has served as chief justice since 2021.

The court issued a correction to its announcement, clarifying that the warrants had been unveiled, not issued — they were first issued last year and had remained under seal. The ICC said at the time that the full warrants and the details of the incidents they are based on were kept sealed to protect witnesses and victims.

The warrants accuse the two men of the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Akhundzada and Haqqani had committed the offence against girls, women and other persons not conforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender. It was the first time ICC judges had issued warrants on charges of gender persecution.

The Taliban condemned the warrants when they were issued, calling them an example of hostility towards Islam. “We neither recognise anything by the name of an international court nor do we consider ourselves bound by it,” the Taliban government’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement.