Afghanistan's supreme leader affirmed on Tuesday that the Taliban will not be intimidated by “threats” in a speech given days after the International Criminal Court prosecutor requested a warrant for his arrest and another Taliban leader over gender-based persecution.
“Whether Westerners or Easterners, how could we believe them and not almighty God's promises! How can we allow ourselves to be affected by their threats!” Hibatullah Akhundzada said in a recording of a speech shared with journalists on Tuesday.
The address was given at a graduation ceremony for religious scholars in southern Kandahar province on Monday, the governor's spokesman, Mahmood Azzam, told AFP.
Last Thursday, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor announced he had requested arrest warrants for two top Afghan Taliban officials for the repression of women.
Karim Khan said in a statement he asked judges to approve warrants for the group’s supreme leader, and the head of Afghanistan’s Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, accusing the men of crimes against humanity for gender-based persecution.
Taliban members are “Muslims who stand for what is right and cannot be harmed by anybody. If anyone stands against them, from the West or East, nobody can harm them,” Akhundzada said.
Since sweeping back to power in 2021 -- ousting the Western-backed government and ending a 20-year insurgency -- the Taliban authorities have implemented their own strict interpretation of Islamic law.
They have imposed restrictions on women and girls the United Nations has characterized as “gender apartheid.”
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from education.
Women have been ordered to cover their hair and faces and have been barred from parks and stopped from working in government offices.
ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant - a process that could take weeks or even months.
The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its arrest warrants - with mixed results.
