Conservative attorney Larry Klayman has launched another legal battle against the People’s Republic of China.
On March 30, Klayman filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging the world’s most populated nation-state intentionally developed a deadly biological weapon and then lost control over it. This is Klayman’s genesis theory for the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and what he believes precipitated the ensuing global pandemic.
No credible evidence supports the claims made in the complaint.
The filing calls “for the opening of an inquiry” by the ICC “to investigate the urgent and important question of the likely creation and release, accidental or otherwise, of a variation of coronavirus known as COVID-19 by the People’s Republic of China and its agencies and officials and functionaries as a biological weapon in violation of China’s agreements under international treaties.”
The complaint also alleges that China engaged in “the subsequent reckless and criminal release” of the virus “from the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the city of Wuhan, China, in Hubei Province.”
Specifically, Klayman and co-complainant Freedom Watch claim that the Chinese government and military “failed to prevent the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s personnel from becoming infected with the bioweapon and then carrying the virus out into the surrounding community and proliferation into the United States.”
“Although it appears that the COVID-19 virus was released at an unplanned, unexpected time, it was prepared and stockpiled as a biological weapon to be used against China’s perceived enemies, including but not limited to the people of the United States,” the complaint continues. “While COVID-19 virus may be too slow acting and slow-spreading to be used quickly against an enemy’s military, it was designed to be used against the general population of one or more of China’s perceived enemy nations, such as the United States.”
Filed in the Hague — the seat of the ICC — under Articles 15 and 53 of the Rome Statute, Klayman and Freedom Watch argue for the appointment of an ICC prosecutor and the initiation of an investigation to ascertain whether China committed Article 7 “crimes against humanity,” specifically “inhumane . . . intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”
While a press release issued by Freedom Watch claims the allegations contained in the complaint are “based on expert analysis” that the virus “leaked from a Chinese bioweapons facility,” the evidence contained in the filing does not actually support that conclusion.
The complaint contains various links to articles dissecting the origins of the Coronavirus but none of those articles or experts make the express biological weapons claim advanced in the complaint.
Klayman and Freedom Watch attorney Jonathon Moseley also cite one Dany Shoham, who is described as “a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare.”
Shoham also refuses to make the explicit biological weapons claim (emphasis added):
In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Klayman is currently suing the Chinese government for $2o trillion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
“I call on lawyers in nations around the world to join our effort to punish the guilty and have them thrown in prison where they belong,” Klayman said of the latest legal effort against China. “I also call on all persons of good intentions to join or follow and support our class action suit in Dallas, Texas, and I am actively amassing a team of lawyers to make sure that China, and not the American taxpayer, pay the bill for the human suffering and death which this rogue communist ‘terrorist state’ has caused. I am also assisting lawyers in other nations globally to bring similar legal actions.”
Read the full ICC complaint below:
Klayman ICC Complaint by Law&Crime on Scribd
[Image via PAUL HANDLEY/AFP via Getty Images]
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