Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban (R) and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, review a military honor guard in Budapest on April 3, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Budapest, April 3 (RHC)-- Hungary has announced its decision to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC), hours after the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the subject of an arrest warrant – arrived in the European country for a visit.
In a message on Facebook, Gergely Gulyas, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff said the country would begin the withdrawal process on Thursday “in accordance with constitutional and international law frameworks.”
The announcement came after Netanyahu arrived in Budapest, where he was welcomed in defiance of calls to bar or arrest the Israeli war criminal. In November 2024, the ICC issued the arrest warrant against Netanyahu over war crimes related to Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The ruling obliged all the 125 countries, which signed the Rome Statute establishing the ICC, to detain and surrender Netanyahu to the Hague-based court.
However, Orban invited Netanyahu to visit Hungary the day after the ICC issued the warrant.
As a party to the Rome Statute, Hungary was required to act on the ICC warrant against Netanyahu, but it ignored its obligation. Hungarian lawmakers have said that although the country signed the ICC's founding document in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, it was never made part of Hungarian law.
The visit to Hungary is Netanyahu’s second trip outside the occupied territories since the warrant was issued. In February, he met with US President Donald Trump in Washington.
Israel unleashed its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 50,523 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 114,776 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
[ SOURCE: PRESS TV and NEWS AGENCIES ]
