Former Canadian official warns about Hague court he helped create, which is trying to arrest Israeli officials

Alan Kessel, a former senior legal adviser to Global Affairs Canada, expressed concerns about the International Criminal Court (ICC), which he helped establish through negotiations for the Rome Statute in 1998. Kessel stated that the court, originally conceived to address "the most heinous crimes" as a "court of last resort," has deviated from its intended purpose. He noted that the ICC, which is currently seeking to arrest Israeli officials, has become "a very different animal today," moving from a narrow focus to a broader reach that he believes undermines its original intent and the principle of complementarity. Kessel lamented that "we’ve actually wrapped ourselves in a knot in the pursuit of a higher ideal of international legal jurisprudence," as the court's legal language is increasingly used for political accusations rather than establishing legal responsibility.