The Hind Rajab Foundation petitioned Lithuania’s Constitutional Court on Monday to investigate an Israeli dental student in Kaunas, escalating a legal campaign that Lithuanian prosecutors and two levels of court have already rejected this year. The foundation argues that Lithuania’s refusal to apply universal jurisdiction to a suspect present on its territory violates the country’s own constitution.
HRF identifies the suspect as Sean Gor, an Israeli national studying dentistry at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences. Gor served in the “Vampire Empire” company of the IDF’s 52nd Battalion in the 401st Armored Brigade and was deployed to Gaza from October 2023 until at least August 2024, according to the foundation’s own account. HRF ties him to the destruction of UNRWA headquarters and the Shifa Hospital compound in March and April 2024, and to the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, the girl for whom the foundation is named, along with members of her family and two paramedics in Gaza City on 29 January 2024. Earlier coverage of the complaint identified him only by the initials “S.G.” Israel has consistently rejected allegations that it committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The Constitutional Court Filing
The petition, dated 29 June 2026 and submitted in Vilnius, seeks a finding that Lithuania’s interpretation of universal jurisdiction is incompatible with the country’s constitution. The complaint cites Articles 29, 30, 135(1) and 138 of the Lithuanian Constitution, covering equality before the law, access to the courts, the duty to comply with universally recognized principles of international law, and the binding nature of Lithuania’s international obligations.
It was filed by HRF’s head of litigation Natacha Bracq and Lithuanian counsel Rytis Satkauskas, a managing partner at the ReLex Law Firm. The case now sits with the same court that has, in recent years, reviewed numerous cases touching EU law and Lithuania’s international commitments. The foundation’s strategy is unusual: rather than appealing further through the criminal courts, it argues that Lithuania’s top judges must decide whether the prosecutor’s narrow reading of universal jurisdiction can stand at all.
Six Months of Lithuanian Rejections
HRF’s criminal complaint reached the Lithuanian Office of the Prosecutor General on 27 March 2026. Within two weeks the prosecutor refused to open a pre-trial investigation, treating universal jurisdiction as an exceptional mechanism to be applied only in limited circumstances. Two courts then ratified the refusal, exhausting the foundation’s options in the criminal stream.
The sequence, set out in HRF’s filing and in reporting from details of the petition published on June 30, played out as follows:
- 27 March 2026: HRF submits criminal complaint alleging war crimes by Sean Gor to the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office.
- 9 April 2026: The Prosecutor General refuses to open an investigation, citing a narrow reading of universal jurisdiction.
- 27 April 2026: The Vilnius City District Court upholds the prosecutor’s refusal.
- 21 May 2026: The Vilnius Regional Court upholds the refusal on appeal.
- 29 June 2026: HRF files an individual constitutional complaint at Lithuania’s Constitutional Court.
With the regional court ruling in May, HRF had no ordinary criminal remedy left. The constitutional complaint is the foundation’s last domestic avenue before the country’s highest judicial body.
What HRF Alleges About Sean Gor
According to HRF’s own statement, Gor was deployed to Gaza from the start of the war in October 2023 through at least August 2024, and is now in his third year at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in Kaunas. The foundation’s complaint does not depend on findings from any investigative authority or court; HRF details the allegations in its June 29 statement on the constitutional complaint and says it preserved its own investigative file.
HRF submitted photographs it says show Gor in IDF uniform in a combat zone in Gaza, including one image it claims shows him standing in the turret of a tank. After the foundation confidentially filed its complaint in Lithuania, it alleges that Gor deleted material documenting his service, including posts and photographs. HRF says it had already preserved the material.
The complaint aligns Gor’s unit, Vampire Empire company of the 52nd Battalion in the 401st Armored Brigade, with the destruction of UNRWA headquarters and the Shifa Hospital compound in March and April 2024. It also names the unit in connection with the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab, her family, and two paramedics. Lithuania’s Prosecutor General’s Office, in declining the case, did not assess the underlying evidence, ruling instead on jurisdictional grounds.
Universal Jurisdiction in the Balance
The legal hinge of the case is the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which permits national courts to prosecute certain international crimes regardless of where they were committed or the nationality of the suspect. Lithuania’s prosecutor read the doctrine as an exceptional power available only in narrow cases. HRF reads it as an obligation triggered by credible allegations when a suspect is present.
HRF’s founder, Diab Abu Jahjah, framed Lithuania’s stance in terms of complicity.
The normalization of life for individuals accused of destroying Gaza and committing genocide while they attend university in Lithuania sends a dangerous message. Universal jurisdiction exists precisely to ensure that there is no safe haven for perpetrators of international crimes. When a state allows such individuals to integrate into its society without investigation, it becomes complicit in impunity.
Lithuanian counsel Satkauskas, in a statement released alongside the petition, framed the constitutional question more narrowly. The constitutional order of the Republic of Lithuania, he said, is founded on respect for the principles of international law and the rules-based international order, and refusing to investigate allegations of international crimes committed in Gaza by a person residing in Lithuania undermines global efforts to combat impunity, according to the HRF release.
Eleven Countries and Counting
The Lithuania case is one of a string of similar filings HRF has pursued abroad. According to reporting on the foundation’s wider activities, HRF has lodged complaints against Israeli soldiers in Ecuador, Belgium, the UAE, Brazil, Argentina, Sri Lanka, France, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
- Ecuador
- Belgium
- United Arab Emirates
- Brazil
- Argentina
- Sri Lanka
- France
- Netherlands
- Cyprus
- Thailand
- United Kingdom
HRF’s most-cited operational success came in Belgium in 2025, when federal prosecutors had police question two Israelis at the Tomorrowland music festival. They were released without restrictions, but prosecutors referred their cases to the International Criminal Court. In June 2025, Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said HRF had filed a brief at the ICC accusing more than 1,000 IDF soldiers of war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, and had filed complaints against at least 30 soldiers while they were abroad.
The Man Running the Campaign
The campaign is run by Diab Abu Jahjah, a 54-year-old Lebanese man born in the Bint Jbail district who obtained Belgian citizenship through a marriage he has since ended. HRF operates as a subsidiary of the March 30 Movement, an organization Abu Jahjah founded. He has been barred from entering the United Kingdom and appears on a list of people prohibited from flying over US airspace.
Abu Jahjah’s path to Belgian citizenship runs through an admission he made to the New York Times in 2003. “Most asylum seekers invent a story, and I said I had a conflict with Hezbollah leaders,” he said at the time. “It was just a low political trick to get my papers.” Before founding HRF he ran the Arab European League, which a Dutch appeals court fined in 2010 for hate speech over a cartoon on its website depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler. He wrote on Facebook in 2009, according to a profile, that Jews in Israel “can leave with a suitcase or in a coffin.” De Standaard newspaper fired him in 2017.
HRF’s funding remains undisclosed. “They comb social media and run extensive data mining. That costs money. Who’s funding this?” Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, told JNS in a July 2025 profile of Abu Jahjah’s lawfare record.
Abu Jahjah heads the foundation at a moment when his network is widening. He told Israeli media his organization has identified 24 suspects connected to the incident that killed Hind Rajab, including Gor. He has described HRF as continuing to pursue legal avenues across Europe to hold those responsible for atrocities in Gaza accountable. Israel has recommended HRF and its members be added to Israel’s barred-entry list.
Israel’s Denial and What Is Being Tested
Israel has consistently rejected allegations that it committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip, telling reporters that the IDF operates in accordance with international law and seeks to minimize harm to civilians. Israel has also maintained that Hamas operates within the civilian population of Gaza and uses civilians as human shields.
None of the courts or prosecutors HRF has approached in Lithuania has ruled on the underlying evidence of Gor’s alleged participation in the destruction of UNRWA headquarters, the attack on Shifa Hospital, or the killing of Hind Rajab. The constitutional case argues that this is precisely the problem: Lithuania, the foundation contends, has refused to engage with the merits at all. Whether Lithuania’s top court agrees, and what it does with the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, will determine whether the case against Gor moves forward in Lithuanian courts at all.
