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Israeli soldiers are deployed at Erez border with heavy weapons and military vehicles in Erez, Israel on February 29, 2024. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency]
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) on Friday said it filed a criminal complaint in the Czech Republic against an Israeli soldier accused of committing war crimes and acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, the HRF said it submitted the complaint before the the High Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague against Hagay Monsonego, a member of the Israeli army.
It said the complaint was submitted following confirmation that Monsonego is currently present in Prague, “a fact that activates the Czech Republic’s obligations under international and domestic law.”
“This filing, submitted to the High Public Prosecutor’s Office in Prague, marks HRF’s third criminal complaint in the Czech Republic related to crimes committed in Gaza,” said the statement.
“With this third filing, HRF is no longer testing legal theory. It is testing state practice.” The complaint accused Monsonego of “genocide, war crimes, and persecution of civilians committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”
The latest filing follows HRF’s investigative report on Monsonego that documented his service in Gaza as a member of the Mesayaat Shaked Company, 424th “Shaked” Battalion, Givati Brigade, and placed him within the operational context of some of the most serious crimes committed during the assault on Gaza.
The group said the complaint was filed by Jan Taubel, HRF’s legal counsel in the Czech Republic, translating HRF’s evidence into concrete allegations under Czech criminal law.
According to HRF’s investigation, Monsonego was deployed in the besieged enclave between December 2023 and November 2025, including during the siege and destruction of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
The complaint links Monsonego and his unit to operations connected to an attack on a protected medical facility, the siege of civilians, patients, and medical staff, mass detention and mistreatment of Palestinian civilians, and practices involving blindfolding, restraint, and humiliation during arrest and transfer operations.
The Hind Rajab Foundation, which is named in honor of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, aims to address and challenge what it describes as Israeli impunity concerning war crimes and human rights violations in Palestine.
Israel killed more than 71,000 people, mostly women and children, in Gaza since October 2023 and destroyed the enclave. A ceasefire took effect in October 2025 but Israeli violations have continued.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the Gaza Strip.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Hind Rajab and her family were martyred by Israeli forces, who fired 355 bullets at the child and her family while they were trapped in a vehicle. Photo: PRCS
The move followed a thorough criminal investigation conducted by various institutions, which provided compelling evidence of the complicity of the named personnel.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) filed a complaint on Tuesday, October 21, to the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the names of 24 Israeli soldiers and commanders, whom evidence suggests are complicit in murdering six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, six of her family members, and two Palestinian paramedics in January 2024.
The move came one day after Al Jazeera Arabic broadcast a documentary on Monday, October 20, revealing the identities of the Israeli personnel, who “directly participated in or facilitated” the brutal assault.
The Brussels-based non-profit organization, which was named after the victimized Palestinian child with the mission of addressing and challenging Israeli impunity, said that the new complaint builds on its first communication to the ICC that was filed on May 3, 2025.
Who are the Israeli personnel identified by the HRF?
The first communication was filed by the foundation, after it identified Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Benny Aharon as the Israeli officer who has been directly responsible for Hind Rajab’s crime.
Aharon is the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) that carried out the military operation, which targeted Hind’s family car in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood.
The HRF said then that it took a whole year of investigation to identify the IOF personnel under Aharon’s command who were involved in the attack.
In its new complaint, the HRF named the following IOF commanders and soldiers besides Aharon:
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Ella, Commander of the 52nd Armored Battalion, which operates under the 401st Armored Brigade.
Major Sean Glass, Commander of the Vampire Empire Company, which operates under the 52nd Armored Battalion.
22 identified tank crew members of the Vampire Empire Company.
HRF’s executive director, Dyab Abou Jahjah, explained to Al Jazeera that the organization has known that the 401st brigade was responsible for killing Hind Rajab, but it wanted to go deeper than that and identify the battalion, the company and even every single tank participating on the ground at the time of the crime.
Regarding the complicit IOF company, Abou Jahjah said: “The company has only an English name ‘Vampire Empire’, which also indicates that it is in some sense a multinational company, and indeed it is. This company played a heinous role in the genocide in Gaza. It participated in the assault on Al-Shifa Hospital and in committing the massacre there.”
“There is a large number of dual-nationality soldiers in the company, and this truly opens up avenues for legal action at the countries’ level. At the level of the home countries of these criminals,” he noted.
How were these names identified?
According to Al-Jazeera’s documentary, these names were identified by tracking the social media accounts and profiles of various IOF personnel, who were boasting about their crimes in Gaza by posting related footage online for several months.
Publicly available sources and other privately leaked documents, were also used by Al Jazeera to identify the names of those found complicit in various IOF units during Israel’s genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip, focusing on Hind Rajab’s killing incident.
An investigation was conducted by Al Jazeera, London-based multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture, and the world’s first not-for-profit organization producing audio investigations, Earshot.
The three investigatory partners relied on evidence and analysis based on maps, satellite images, eye witnesses accounts, audio recordings, and phone calls obtained from the crime scene, which precisely revealed the source of the shooting.
“It was a site where there was not much visual evidence of the incident until after it had transpired. As with many of our cases, we use satellite imagery and this case was no exception. And we were, in this case, also able to use audio recordings that were captured by the Palestinian Red Crescent,” Nicholas Masterton from Forensic Architecture told Al Jazeera in the documentary.
“What was interesting about this case, was the way that those two things; the spatial mapping that came from the satellite imagery and the audio recordings, came together to give us an insight into what occurred on that day,” Masterton added.
Israel claimed that Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics were present in an area where an exchange of fire took place between the IOF and Palestinian resistance fighters.
However, a 28-second audio recording of Hind Rajab’s cousin screaming at the time of the incident, while rapid gunshot from a weapon that fires at high rate is heard, confirms that no exchange of fire took place then.
Satellite images also showed that only Israeli Merkava tanks were deployed in the area, when the crime was perpetrated.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
