The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), the anti-Israeli Belgian organization whose founder supports Hezbollah, filed a request on Saturday with the US Justice Department seeking prosecution against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
According to the organization, Ben-Gvir bears direct responsibility for “war crimes, systematic torture policy in prisons, abuse, murder, rape and incitement to genocide.”
The organization said the complaint was submitted ahead of Ben-Gvir’s expected visit to New York on July 7 to 8. As part of the visit, the minister is expected to head a delegation from the National Security Ministry to a conference at the UN headquarters in New York, an annual gathering of police chiefs and interior security ministers from around the world, under the title “Investing in Peace.”
According to the Hind Rajab Foundation, Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for the Prison Service and the Border Police, has deliberately promoted harsher detention conditions, including starvation, beatings, sexual torture and denial of medical care. The organization claims he personally participated in abuses, documented them, and that some of the alleged victims are US citizens, which grants the US Justice Department jurisdiction to take action against him.
The foundation is demanding a criminal investigation, an arrest warrant and a ban on his departure from the United States.
Shin Bet 'network of torture camps' under Ben-Gvir, HRF says
Although the Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) is not subordinate to the National Security Ministry, the foundation claims that many Palestinians, international bodies and NGOs have reported that under Ben-Gvir’s leadership, the Shin Bet has also become a “network of torture camps.”
According to the claim, this “torture policy” has also led to a significant number of deaths, with “at least 46 documented cases of Palestinians who died in Shin Bet detention between October 2023 and August 2025.”
“Ben-Gvir personally participated in cases of torture and cruel or inhumane treatment in prisons, and frequently filmed himself while abusing prisoners,” the foundation alleges, citing among other things a widely publicized incident at Ashdod Port in which Ben-Gvir filmed himself taking part in the abuse and mistreatment of participants in the flotilla.
Ben-Gvir 'among greatest criminals of our time,' HRF says
Jake Romm, HRF’s representative in the United States, said upon filing the complaint that “Itamar Ben-Gvir is among the greatest criminals of our time, a man responsible for implementing a barbaric policy of murder, torture, rape, and abuse across the Israeli prison system.”
Romm continued the accusations: “This is a man responsible for direct incitement to genocide and issuing orders to ensure it is carried out on the ground. This is a man for whom even the massacre of the past two and a half years is not enough.” He added, “Every country in the world, including the United States, is obligated to arrest him and bring him to trial for his crimes. Moreover, Ben-Gvir’s torture and abuse of US citizens activates the most basic sovereign duty, to protect its citizens.”
It is noted that the founder of the March 30 Movement and its affiliated organization the Hind Rajab Foundation, Dyab Abou Jahjah, is Lebanese, a Shi'ite Muslim close to Hezbollah, born in the Bint Jbeil district and about 54 years old. He obtained Belgian citizenship through marriage to a Belgian woman from whom he has since divorced. He is barred from entering the UK and appears on a list of individuals prohibited from boarding flights passing through US airspace.