Hungary says it is withdrawing from ICC as Israeli leader visits

Hungary's government has decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), it said on Thursday, shortly after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in the country for a state visit, Reuters reported. 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban invited his Israeli counterpart to Budapest in November, a day after the ICC issued its arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, where Israel launched its offensive following an attack by Hamas. 

Israel has rejected the accusations, which it says are politically motivated and fuelled by antisemitism. It says the ICC has lost all legitimacy by issuing the warrants against a democratically elected leader of a country exercising the right of self defence.

As a founding member of the ICC, Hungary is theoretically obliged to arrest and hand over anyone subject to a warrant from the court but Orban made clear that Hungary would not respect the ruling which he called "brazen, cynical and completely unacceptable," according to Reuters. 

Hungary signed the ICC's founding document in 1999 and ratified it in 2001, but the law has not been promulgated.

Gergely Gulyas, Orban's chief of staff, said in November that although Hungary ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC, it "was never made part of Hungarian law", meaning that no measure of the court can be carried out within Hungary.

On Thursday, Reuters quoted Gulyas as telling Hungarian state news agency MTI that the government would launch the withdrawal process later in the day.

Orban had raised the prospect of Hungary's exit from the ICC after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the court's prosecutor Karim Khan in February.