New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that he has no legal authority to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here. It is clear we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” Mamdani said.
The announcement comes just four days after he said in an interview with New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro that the city’s legal team was looking into arresting the Prime Minister when he attends the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Mamdani begins his remarks by calling the prime minister a war criminal, saying he is “the architect of a horrific genocide on the Palestinian people.” Claiming that he is responsible for killing 73,000 people, for the maiming of tens of thousands of children, for the targeting of neo-natal hospitals and maternity care centers, “denying newborns the chance to live.”
The mayor asserted the claim of starvation, saying that the prime minister blocked food and humanitarian aid from reaching the people in Gaza.
He also claimed that aid workers and journalists were gunned down and that the UN confirmed last month that Palestinian children continue to be deliberately targeted and killed by the IDF.
“The list goes on and on. As we, as Americans, pay for the bombs that do the killing,” he said.
