Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk says Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu will not be detained despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.
The Polish government has guaranteed that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested if he attends the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant against him.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, from the opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), this week wrote to the government requesting that Netanyahu not be arrested if he decides to attend the Auschwitz commemoration on 27 January, according to a presidential aide.
The office of Prime Minister Donald Tusk published a resolution on Thursday saying it would ensure the “safe participation of the leaders of Israel in the commemorations”.
“I confirm, whether it is the prime minister, the president or the minister — as it is currently declared — of education of Israel, whoever will come to Oswiecim for the celebrations in Auschwitz will be assured of safety and will not be detained,” Tusk said.
Tusk made clear that the resolution was “precise” and only applied to the Auschwitz commemorations.
“It is also very important for us that Poland is not among those countries that openly and demonstratively want to disregard the decisions of international tribunals,” he added.
The ICC issued arrest warrants in November for Netanyahu and his ex-defence minister, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 15-month war in Gaza.
Member countries of the ICC, such as Poland, are required to detain suspects facing a warrant if they set foot on their soil, but the court has no way to enforce that. Israel is not a member of the ICC and disputes its jurisdiction.
The court has more than 120 member states, although some countries, including France and Hungary, have already said that they would not arrest him. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán even said he would defy the warrant by inviting Netanyahu to Budapest.
It is unclear whether Netanyahu plans to attend the commemoration later this month, although he has been present at previous anniversary events at Auschwitz.
Poland’s Foreign Ministry, in response to an email query, said on Thursday that “it has not received any information so far indicating that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to attend the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.”
The commemoration will be attended by international officials and elderly survivors. It is to take place in Oswiecim, a town that was under German occupation during World War II where the Nazi German forces operated the most notorious of their death camps.
More than 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz. Historians say that most of them, about a million, were Jewish, but the victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.
At least 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Additional sources • AP
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