israel must be brought to trial for war crimes: Iran MP

A senior Iranian legislator says the Israeli regime should be brought to international trial for committing war crimes in its deadly military offensive against the blockaded Gaza Strip.

The time has come for the world to investigate Tel Aviv’s brutalities in Gaza through the UN and put those behind the killings and destruction in the impoverished enclave on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), said First Vice Speaker of Iran’s Majlis Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi-Fard.

He made the comments in an address to the opening session of the Committee on Social and Cultural Affairs of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA) in the Iranian capital, Tehran, on Monday.

The Iranian parliamentarian further said the Tel Aviv regime has committed genocide and war crimes against Gazans and violated international human rights conventions, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Aboutorabi-Fard also called on the parliaments of the Asian countries to use all their potential to reconstruct the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and pursue the prosecution of Israeli aggressors.

Around 1,940 Palestinians, including 470 children, have so far been killed and nearly 10,000 others injured since Israel first launched its military assaults against the Gaza Strip on July 8. While the Israeli army says around 65 Israelis have been killed in the conflict the resistance movement of Hamas puts the number at more than 150.

On August 5, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki met with prosecutors at the ICC and filed a complaint with the criminal court against the Israeli regime’s fatal attacks on Gaza.

The development comes days after the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) passed a resolution calling for an independent probe into Israel’s war crimes in the densely-populated Palestinian land.