The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has made an allegation that a senior UK official threatened to defund the court if it proceeded with plans to issue an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu.
Karim Khan, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), has said that the British government threatened to defund the ICC and leave the Rome Statute over an arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza.
Khan made the allegation against the UK government in a submission to the court defending its decision to go ahead with the prosecution of Netanyahu for his role in the Gaza genocide.
The name of the “senior UK official” was not given by Khan, who says the call took place on April 23, 2024.
Various media outlets have speculated that, based on the reports, it may have been the then British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron. Khan alleged that the official argued that issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders like Netanyahu or Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli Minister of Defence, was uncalled for and disproportionate.
The allegation which Khan submitted to the court contains the details of an alleged campaign of threats faced by the prosecutor in the period leading up to the request for the warrant against Netanyahu.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in May 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
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The statement was submitted by Khan on Wednesday, December 10, to the ICC’s appeal chamber in response to an Israeli request which called for Khan to be removed from the investigation and for the warrants against the Israeli leaders to be dropped.
Alleged phone call
The then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, was reported to have made a heated phone call to Karim Khan in April 2024, in which he reportedly spoke aggressively and said that he was “losing the plot” over the issuing of arrest warrants for the Israeli leaders.
Cameron allegedly told Khan that applying for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be “like dropping a hydrogen bomb”.
Cameron allegedly said it was one thing to investigate and prosecute Russia for a “war of aggression” on Ukraine, but quite another to prosecute Israel when it was “defending itself from the attacks of 7 October”.
Khan then claims that Cameron said that if the ICC went ahead with the issuing of the arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.
Article 127 of the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding charter, allows countries to withdraw by written notice to the secretary-general of the UN.
Israel probes arrest warrant
Israel alleged that Khan had rushed the issuing of the warrants after he was made aware of sexual misconduct allegations against him, which Khan’s statement rejects. Khan describes Israel’s claims against him as being based on “a haze of ends-oriented conjecture and misleading or false assertions”, and “a miasma of speculative reporting”.
Khan’s statement lays out a detailed chronology of events that led the ICC to apply for warrants against the two Israelis, as well as Hamas leaders, on 20 May 2024, after months of “a meticulous process” by his office.
Khan alleges that a call was also made to him on May 1 by US senator Lindsey Graham, warning him that applying for an arrest warrant meant Hamas may as well shoot Israeli hostages.
Sexual misconduct claims against Khan
A string of allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Khan in May 2024, which led to his office announcing his leave of absence pending the conclusion of a UN-led investigation.
The allegations of sexual misconduct were brought to Khan’s attention on the same day he was planning to announce Netanyahu and Gallant’s arrest warrants, as outlined in Khan’s timeline of events in his statement.
The UN probe into the sexual misconduct allegations has been finalised and was handed to judges examining the claims on Thursday, 11 December. The judges are expected to release a legal conclusion on the UN’s fact-finding report within thirty days.
The current UK Labour government has drawn sharp criticism from the public, as well as many other activists and independent MPs for its stance on Israel and the Gaza genocide.
Earlier this week, as Storm Byron was flooding Gazan refugees resulting in the death of an 8-month-old girl in her family’s tent, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, declared that she is “unapologetically” a Zionist at a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lunch.
Reeves also claimed that Labour’s support for Israel is “alive and well”.
