The U.S. lawyers Elliot M. Malin and Eli M. Rosenbaum have officially filed a war crimes and genocide case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds commander Gen. Esmail Qaani for their complicity in supporting Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel. It was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

The two lawyers represent Maurice Schnaider, the uncle of Shiri Bibas, who was kidnapped together with her small children, Ariel and Kfir, by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 attack. All three were brutally murdered in captivity in Gaza. Shiri's husband, Yarden, was also kidnapped and released from captivity in February of this year. 

“My family, the Shnaider family, had [five] generations tortured and murdered at the hands of those who persecute people of Jewish heritage,” Shnaider said. The nazis murdered his grandmother during the Holocaust and his grandfather and mother succeeded to flee to South America. 

“‘Never again’ was supposed to mean something, so today we demand justice for my lost and affected family, and so many others also with loss at the hands of terrorists just for being Jewish,” he explained.

The Iranian ayatollah regime openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and has actively backed genocidal antisemitic terrorist organizations such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2023 that hundreds of terrorists from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad received combat training by the IRGCQuds force in Iran weeks before the Oct. 7 atrocities. 

“Before the war, Iran directly assisted Hamas with money, training and weapons and technological know-how,” Israel’s spokesman for the IDF, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari stated at the time. “Even now, Iran is helping Hamas with intelligence."

Malin and Rosenbaum are consequently accusing Khamenei and the Quds head Qaani of being complicit in the Hamas massacre and kidnapping of Israeli civilians. 

“The individual doesn’t need to be present in the [place of] jurisdiction. As long as they participated in the crime that came from the [place of] jurisdiction, the court asserts jurisdiction,” Malin told the Jerusalem Post. 

“It is long past time for the prosecutor to act to hold accountable Hamas’ main accomplices in Tehran,” Rosenbaum argued. 

“I don’t have high hopes for the ICC,” Malin admitted. “I think it’s a very biased institution. But I am trying to give them a way to add credibility to themselves. If they truly care about justice and seeking justice for victims, then they have the opportunity to show us that they do,” he argued.

“So genocide is an act with the intent to destroy in full or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. It is an intent crime. Everybody likes to push it as this numeric crime, numerical value, all of these things, but that’s just not how it works,” Malin assessed.

He explains why he believes there is a solid genocide case against Iranian leaders. 

“We have explicit language from Iranian leaders calling for the extermination of Israel. If you’re calling for the extermination of Israel, well, the national group Israelis are a protected class under the genocide convention. So not only do I think personally, as a lawyer, that Iran [committed] incitement to genocide, I also think that they have committed the crime of genocide via Hamas.”

“It’s personal to stand up for our people as the Jewish people, which makes it a bit heavier to do,” Malin said. “But we can all do something to pursue justice. Mr. Shnaider deserves that, his family deserves that."

This article was originally published at All Israel News