Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks during a press conference with Israel's Prime Minister (unseen) after bilateral talks on April 3, 2025 in Budapest, Hungary. (Photo by Attila Kisbenedek / AFP)
Budapest: The Hungarian government has decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), shortly after the arrival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday that his country decided to withdraw from the ICC because it has become a political court. The Israeli Prime Minister faces an arrest warrant from the ICC for war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli occupation's aggression on October 7, 2023. For its part, the Presidency of the International Criminal Court (ICC) expressed its concern Thursday over Hungary's decision to withdraw from the court. In a letter, the ICC Presidency urged Hungary to maintain its unwavering commitment to the Rome Statute, the court's founding treaty. Hungary is a founding member of the ICC and is theoretically obligated to arrest and surrender anyone against whom the court issues a warrant. On November 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Galant, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The court confirmed, in a statement at the time, that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Galant committed crimes against civilians, noting that the crimes attributed to them included the use of starvation as a weapon of war, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
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