Alleged evidence of Israeli war crimes was taken to the International Criminal Court by Palestinian officials, including descriptions of military operations throughout the occupied territories and in particular last year’s war in Gaza, killings of civilians, illegal settlements and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.

Xavier Abu Eid, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said Palestinians had struggled for years in international forums to reach the International Criminal Court, the New York Times reported.

“Whoever says that the Palestinians are trying to politicise the ICC are in fact trying to deny the Palestinians a very basic right to justice,” he said. “We are showing our seriousness to support a preliminary investigation that has already started.”

The South African government has threatened to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) after facing international criticism over the failure to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted on charges of genocide.

A cabinet meeting took place on Thursday, after which the government announced it was reviewing membership of the ICC "for a number of reasons". Stating that it was taking its international obligations "seriously", the government said it had "to balance its obligations to the ICC with its obligations to the AU and individual states".

Withdrawal from the ICC would be a "last resort", it added.

Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, said “such a decision will only be taken when South Africa has exhausted all the remedies available to it”.

A mass grave containing 17 bodies has been found in the Andes mountains of Peru.

The dead are thought to have died in the 1980s, when local farmers were kidnapped by Shining Path rebels and disappeared.

Prosecutor Honorio Casallo Diaz said investigations carried out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggested the farmers had been abducted in the 1980s from the town of Vilcashuaman.

A South Afrcan court has criticised the government over its failure to prevent Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir from leaving the country, despite an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court.

The court had ordered the president to remain in the country while it investigated whether he could be arrested, however he was allowed to leave by plane, with the tacit approval of the South African government.

Judge Dunstan Mlambo said there was reason to believe that the South African government had committed a crime by ignoring the court order, and gave the government 24 hours to explain its actions.

"If the state... does not abide by court orders, the democratic edifice will crumble stone-by-stone until it collapses," he said.

Senior army officers in Colombia knew of extrajudicial killings of civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report.

The rights organisation said it had seen evidence which strongly suggests "numerous generals and colonels knew or should have known about 'false positive' killings, and may have ordered or otherwise actively furthered them", including transcripts or recordings of testimony provided to prosecutors directly accusing several of Colombia's highest ranking officers of "having known of, planned, or attempted to facilitate false positive killings while holding those positions".

“False positive killings amount to one of the worst episodes of mass atrocity in the Western Hemisphere in recent years, and there is mounting evidence that many senior army officers bear responsibility,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive Americas director at Human Rights Watch.