Diplomacy
Hungary withdraws from ICC following Netanyahu visit
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, told the state news agency MTI on Thursday that the Hungarian government had decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The Orban government announced this decision shortly after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for whom the ICC had issued an arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for an official visit.
Netanyahu began his four-day trip to Hungary today. Hungarian Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky shared photos of the pair’s meeting at the airport on his Facebook account, saying, “Welcome to Budapest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu!”
Hungarian Prime Minister Orban was among the first to condemn the ICC’s announcement that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu bore criminal responsibility for war crimes, including “starvation as a method of warfare.”
Calling it “outrageous, cynical, and utterly unacceptable,” Orbán added that his friend’s freedom would be guaranteed during his visit.
