Pan-Arab Parliament welcomes Palestine’s joining ICC as important step to "holding Zionist war criminals to account"

CAIRO, 2nd April 2015 (WAM) --- Speaker of the pan-Arab Parliament, Ahmed Mohammed Al Jarwan, has welcomed Palestine's official joining the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a very important step towards "exerting pressures on the Zionist entity and holding Zionist war criminals to account." In a statement, Al Jarwan said, "Palestine's membership of the ICC marks an important stage of the incessant Palestinian struggle against the brutal Zionist occupation and its terrorist crimes against the Arab Palestinian people and land." He stressed that Palestine's ICC membership will enable the Palestinians to hold Zionist war criminals to account for their repeated crimes against the Arab Palestinian people and land. Al Jarwan also stressed that that ICC membership will also constitute a tool for exerting pressures on the Zionist entity and the international powers supporting and for restoring the Palestinian people's internationally-recognised rights that were usurped. On Wednesday, Palestine was formally welcomed as the 123rd member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday. At a ceremony in The Hague, The Netherlands, where the Court is based, the ICC's Second Vice-President, Judge Kuniko Ozaki, presented the Foreign Minister of Palestine, Riad al-Malki, with a special edition of the Rome Statute. The statute, which entered into force in 2002, is the treaty that was adopted in Rome in July 1998 to establish the ICC. – Emirates News Agency, WAM – http://www.wam.ae/en/news/arab/1395278791138.html