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By Catherine Nicholls, CNN<\/strong><\/p>\n The International Criminal Court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two top Taliban leaders, accusing them of persecuting girls and women in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The pair are suspected of \u201cordering, inducing or soliciting\u201d the persecution of girls, women and others who don\u2019t conform with the Taliban\u2019s policy on gender, the ICC said in a statement.<\/p>\n Haibatullah Akhundzada, supreme leader of the Taliban, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, chief justice of the hardline Islamist group, are \u201ccriminally responsible\u201d for carrying out persecution on gender-based grounds since \u201cat least\u201d August 15 2021, the ICC\u2019s chief prosecutor said back in January.<\/p>\n The Taliban called the arrest warrants \u201cnonsense,\u201d writing in a statement that it does not recognize the ICC.<\/p>\n Since seizing control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the group has implemented a string of oppressive measures against women and girls, even cracking down on the sound of women\u2019s voices in public.<\/p>\n Girls have been barred from education after sixth grade. Women must veil their bodies and wear a face covering at all times in public, and have also been forbidden to look at men they are not related to.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile the Taliban have imposed certain rules and prohibitions on the population as a whole, they have specifically targeted girls and women by reason of their gender, depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms,\u201d the ICC said on Tuesday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n