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The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor said he would seek an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity over alleged persecution of the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority.
A panel of three judges will decide whether there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that General Min Aung Hlaing is criminally responsible for the deportation and persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
There is no set time frame for their decision, but it usually takes about three months to rule on an arrest warrant.
A spokesman for Myanmar’s ruling junta did not immediately return calls for comment from the military government after the announcement.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it sought the warrant after thorough, independent and impartial investigations. More applications for arrest warrants would follow, he said.
More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh during the campaign, which UN investigators say was carried out with “genocidal intent”.
Myanmar denies allegations of genocide and has always maintained that it did not target civilians, saying it was conducting military operations against terrorists.
Myanmar is not a member of the treaty-based ICC, but in rulings in 2018 and 2019, judges said the court had jurisdiction over alleged cross-border crimes that were partly committed in neighboring ICC member Bangladesh, and said prosecutors could to launch a formal investigation.
“This is the first application for an arrest warrant against a senior Myanmar government official that my office has filed. More will follow,” the ICC prosecutor said in a statement.
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