[D66] Israel bespioneert, hackt en intimideert International Criminal Court

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

[Kati Piri van de PvdA heeft vragen gesteld aan de regering over de rol 
van Nederland]


Bron:   Guardian
Datum:  28 mei 2024
Auteur: Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan, Yuval Abraham
URL:    
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/spying-hacking-intimidation-israel-war-icc-exposed
Ref:    Israeli campaign against ICC may be 'crimes against justice',
         say legal experts
         
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/29/israel-icc-criminal-offences-espionage-legal-experts
Ref:    https://www.theguardian.com/law/international-court-of-justice


Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel's nine-year 'war' on the
ICC exposed
-----------------------------------------------------------------
* Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to 
derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu 'obsessed' with intercepts
* Revealed: Israeli spy chief 'threatened' ICC prosecutor over war 
crimes inquiry

When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) 
announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas 
leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: 'I insist that all attempts to 
impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court 
must cease immediately.'

Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in 
the ICC's work, but he noted a clause in the court's foundational treaty 
that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct 
continued, he added, 'my office will not hesitate to act'.

The prosecutor did not say who had attempted to intervene in the 
administration of justice, or how exactly they had done so.

Now, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines 
+972 and Local Call can reveal how Israel has run an almost decade-long 
secret 'war' against the court. The country deployed its intelligence 
agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior 
ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries.

Israeli intelligence captured the communications of numerous ICC 
officials, including Khan and his predecessor as prosecutor, Fatou 
Bensouda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails and documents.

The surveillance was ongoing in recent months, providing Israel's prime 
minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, with advance knowledge of the prosecutor's 
intentions. A recent intercepted communication suggested that Khan 
wanted to issue arrest warrants against Israelis but was under 
'tremendous pressure from the United States', according to a source 
familiar with its contents.

Bensouda, who as chief prosecutor opened the ICC's investigation in 
2021, paving the way for last week's announcement, was also spied on and 
allegedly threatened.

Netanyahu has taken a close interest in the intelligence operations 
against the ICC, and was described by one intelligence source as being 
'obsessed' with intercepts about the case. Overseen by his national 
security advisers, the efforts involved the domestic spy agency, the 
Shin Bet, as well as the military's intelligence directorate, Aman, and 
cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200. Intelligence gleaned from 
intercepts was, sources said, disseminated to government ministries of 
justice, foreign affairs and strategic affairs.

A covert operation against Bensouda, revealed on Tuesday by the 
Guardian, was run personally by Netanyahu's close ally Yossi Cohen, who 
was at the time the director of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, 
the Mossad. At one stage, the spy chief even enlisted the help of the 
then president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila.

Details of Israel's nine-year campaign to thwart the ICC's inquiry have 
been uncovered by the Guardian, an Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 
Magazine and Local Call, a Hebrew-language outlet.

The joint investigation draws on interviews with more than two dozen 
current and former Israeli intelligence officers and government 
officials, senior ICC figures, diplomats and lawyers familiar with the 
ICC case and Israel's efforts to undermine it.

Contacted by the Guardian, a spokesperson for the ICC said it was aware 
of 'proactive intelligence-gathering activities being undertaken by a 
number of national agencies hostile towards the court'. They said the 
ICC was continually implementing countermeasures against such activity, 
and that 'none of the recent attacks against it by national intelligence 
agencies' had penetrated the court's core evidence holdings, which had 
remained secure.

A spokesperson for Israel's prime minister's office said: 'The questions 
forwarded to us are replete with many false and unfounded allegations 
meant to hurt the state of Israel.' A military spokesperson added: 'The 
IDF [Israel Defense Forces] did not and does not conduct surveillance or 
other intelligence operations against the ICC.'

Since it was established in 2002, the ICC has served as a permanent 
court of last resort for the prosecution of individuals accused of some 
of the world's worst atrocities. It has charged the former Sudanese 
president Omar al-Bashir, the late Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi and 
most recently, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Khan's decision to seek warrants against Netanyahu and his defence 
minister, Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders implicated in the 7 
October attack, marks the first time an ICC prosecutor has sought arrest 
warrants against the leader of a close western ally.

The allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity that Khan has 
levelled against Netanyahu and Gallant all relate to Israel's 
eight-month war in Gaza, which according to the territory's health 
authority has killed more than 35,000 people.

But the ICC case has been a decade in the making, inching forward amid 
rising alarm among Israeli officials at the possibility of arrest 
warrants, which would prevent those accused from travelling to any of 
the court's 124 member states for fear of arrest.

It is this spectre of prosecutions in The Hague that one former Israeli 
intelligence official said had led the 'entire military and political 
establishment' to regard the counteroffensive against the ICC 'as a war 
that had to be waged, and one that Israel needed to be defended against. 
It was described in military terms.'

That 'war' commenced in January 2015, when it was confirmed that 
Palestine would join the court after it was recognised as a state by the 
UN general assembly. Its accession was condemned by Israeli officials as 
a form of 'diplomatic terrorism'.

One former defence official familiar with Israel's counter-ICC effort 
said joining the court had been 'perceived as the crossing of a red 
line' and 'perhaps the most aggressive' diplomatic move taken by the 
Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. 'To be recognised as 
a state in the UN is nice,' they added. 'But the ICC is a mechanism with 
teeth.'


A hand-delivered threat

For Fatou Bensouda, a respected Gambian lawyer who was elected the ICC's 
chief prosecutor in 2012, the accession of Palestine to the court 
brought with it a momentous decision. Under the Rome statute, the treaty 
that established the court, the ICC can exercise its jurisdiction only 
over crimes within member states or by nationals of those states.

Israel, like the US, Russia and China, is not a member. After 
Palestine's acceptance as an ICC member, any alleged war crimes - 
committed by those of any nationality - in occupied Palestinian 
territories now fell under Bensouda's jurisdiction.

On 16 January 2015, within weeks of Palestine joining, Bensouda opened a 
preliminary examination into what in the legalese of the court was 
called 'the situation in Palestine'. The following month, two men who 
had managed to obtain the prosecutor's private address turned up at her 
home in The Hague.

Sources familiar with the incident said the men declined to identify 
themselves when they arrived, but said they wanted to hand-deliver a 
letter to Bensouda on behalf of an unknown German woman who wanted to 
thank her. The envelope contained hundreds of dollars in cash and a note 
with an Israeli phone number.

Sources with knowledge of an ICC review into the incident said that 
while it was not possible to identify the men, or fully establish their 
motives, it was concluded that Israel was likely to be signalling to the 
prosecutor that it knew where she lived. The ICC reported the incident 
to Dutch authorities and put in place additional security, installing 
CCTV cameras at her home.

The ICC's preliminary inquiry in the Palestinian territories was one of 
several such fact-finding exercises the court was undertaking at the 
time, as a precursor to a possible full investigation. Bensouda's 
caseload also included nine full investigations, including into events 
in DRC, Kenya and the Darfur region of Sudan.

Officials in the prosecutor's office believed the court was vulnerable 
to espionage activity and introduced countersurveillance measures to 
protect their confidential inquiries.

In Israel, the prime minister's national security council (NSC) had 
mobilised a response involving its intelligence agencies. Netanyahu and 
some of the generals and spy chiefs who authorised the operation had a 
personal stake in its outcome.

Unlike the international court of justice (ICJ), a UN body that deals 
with the legal responsibility of nation states, the ICC is a criminal 
court that prosecutes individuals, targeting those deemed most 
responsible for atrocities.

Multiple Israeli sources said the leadership of the IDF wanted military 
intelligence to join the effort, which was being led by other spy 
agencies, to ensure senior officers could be protected from charges. 'We 
were told that senior officers are afraid to accept positions in the 
West Bank because they are afraid of being prosecuted in The Hague,' one 
source recalled.

Two intelligence officials involved in procuring intercepts about the 
ICC said the prime minister's office took a keen interest in their work. 
Netanyahu's office, one said, would send 'areas of interests' and 
'instructions' in relation to the monitoring of court officials. Another 
described the prime minister as 'obsessed' with intercepts shedding 
light on the activities of the ICC.


Hacked emails and monitored calls

Five sources familiar with Israel's intelligence activities said it 
routinely spied on the phone calls made by Bensouda and her staff with 
Palestinians. Blocked by Israel from accessing Gaza and the West Bank, 
including East Jerusalem, the ICC was forced to conduct much of its 
research by telephone, which made it more susceptible to surveillance.

Thanks to their comprehensive access to Palestinian telecoms 
infrastructure, the sources said, intelligence operatives could capture 
the calls without installing spyware on the ICC official's devices.

'If Fatou Bensouda spoke to any person in the West Bank or Gaza, then 
that phone call would enter [intercept] systems,' one source said. 
Another said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the 
prosecutor, adding: 'With Bensouda, she's black and African, so who 
cares?'

The surveillance system did not capture calls between ICC officials and 
anyone outside Palestine. However, multiple sources said the system 
required the active selection of the overseas phone numbers of ICC 
officials whose calls Israeli intelligence agencies decided to listen 
to.

According to one Israeli source, a large whiteboard in an Israeli 
intelligence department contained the names of about 60 people under 
surveillance - half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, 
including UN officials and ICC personnel.

In The Hague, Bensouda and her senior staff were alerted by security 
advisers and via diplomatic channels that Israel was monitoring their 
work. A former senior ICC official recalled: 'We were made aware they 
were trying to get information on where we were with the preliminary 
examination.'

Officials also became aware of specific threats against a prominent 
Palestinian NGO, Al-Haq, which was one of several Palestinian human 
rights groups that frequently submitted information to the ICC inquiry, 
often in lengthy documents detailing incidents it wanted the prosecutor 
to consider. The Palestinian Authority submitted similar dossiers.

Such documents often contained sensitive information such as testimony 
from potential witnesses. Al-Haq's submissions are also understood to 
have linked specific allegations of Rome statute crimes to senior 
officials, including chiefs of the IDF, directors of the Shin Bet, and 
defence ministers such as Benny Gantz.

Years later, after the ICC had opened a full investigation into the 
Palestine case, Gantz designated Al-Haq and five other Palestinian 
rights groups as 'terrorist organisations', a label that was rejected by 
multiple European states and later found by the CIA to be unsupported by 
evidence. The organisations said the designations were a 'targeted 
assault' against those most actively engaging with the ICC.

According to multiple current and former intelligence officials, 
military cyber-offensive teams and the Shin Bet both systematically 
monitored the employees of Palestinian NGOs and the Palestinian 
Authority who were engaging with the ICC. Two intelligence sources 
described how Israeli operatives hacked into the emails of Al-Haq and 
other groups communicating with Bensouda's office.

One of the sources said the Shin Bet even installed Pegasus spyware, 
developed by the private-sector NSO Group, on the phones of multiple 
Palestinian NGO employees, as well as two senior Palestinian Authority 
officials.

Keeping tabs on the Palestinian submissions to the ICC's inquiry was 
viewed as part of the Shin Bet's mandate, but some army officials were 
concerned that spying on a foreign civilian entity crossed a line, as it 
had little to do with military operations.

'It has nothing to do with Hamas, it has nothing to do with stability in 
the West Bank,' one military source said of the ICC surveillance. 
Another added: 'We used our resources to spy on Fatou Bensouda - this 
isn't something legitimate to do as military intelligence.'


Secret meetings with the ICC

Legitimate or otherwise, the surveillance of the ICC and Palestinians 
making the case for prosecutions against Israelis provided the Israeli 
government with an advantage in a secret back channel it had opened with 
the prosecutor's office.

Israel's meetings with the ICC were highly sensitive: if made public, 
they had the potential to undermine the government's official position 
that it did not recognise the court's authority.

According to six sources familiar with the meetings, they consisted of a 
delegation of top government lawyers and diplomats who travelled to The 
Hague. Two of the sources said the meetings were authorised by 
Netanyahu.

The Israeli delegation was drawn from the justice ministry, foreign 
ministry and the military advocate general's office. The meetings took 
place between 2017 and 2019, and were led by the prominent Israeli 
lawyer and diplomat Tal Becker.

'In the beginning it was tense,' recalled a former ICC official. 'We 
would get into details of specific incidents. We'd say: 'We're receiving 
allegations about these attacks, these killings,' and they would provide 
us with information.'

A person with direct knowledge of Israel's preparation for the 
back-channel meetings said officials in the justice ministry were 
furnished with intelligence that had been gleaned from Israeli 
surveillance intercepts before delegations arrived at The Hague. 'The 
lawyers who dealt with the issue at the justice ministry had a big 
thirst for intelligence information,' they said.

For the Israelis, the back-channel meetings, while sensitive, presented 
a unique opportunity to directly present legal arguments challenging the 
prosecutor's jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.

They also sought to convince the prosecutor that, despite the Israeli 
military's highly questionable record of investigating wrongdoing in its 
ranks, it had robust procedures for holding its armed forces to account.

This was a critical issue for Israel. A core ICC principle, known as 
complementarity, prevents the prosecutor from investigating or trying 
individuals if they are the subject of credible state-level 
investigations or criminal proceedings.

Israeli surveillance operatives were asked to find out which specific 
incidents might form part of a future ICC prosecution, multiple sources 
said, in order to enable Israeli investigative bodies to 'open 
investigations retroactively' in the same cases.

'If materials were transferred to the ICC, we had to understand exactly 
what they were, to ensure that the IDF investigated them independently 
and sufficiently so that they could claim complementarity,' one source 
explained.

Israel's back-channel meetings with the ICC ended in December 2019, when 
Bensouda, announcing the end of her preliminary examination, said she 
believed there was a 'reasonable basis' to conclude that Israel and 
Palestinian armed groups had both committed war crimes in the occupied 
territories.

It was a significant setback for Israel's leaders, although it could 
have been worse. In a move that some in the government regarded as a 
partial vindication of Israel's lobbying efforts, Bensouda stopped short 
of launching a formal investigation.

Instead, she announced she would ask a panel of ICC judges to rule on 
the contentious question of the court's jurisdiction over the 
Palestinian territories, due to 'unique and highly contested legal and 
factual issues'.

Yet Bensouda had made clear she was minded to open a full investigation 
if the judges gave her the green light. It was against this backdrop 
that Israel ramped up its campaign against the ICC and turned to its top 
spy chief to turn up the heat on Bensouda personally.


Personal threats and a 'smear campaign'

Between late 2019 and early 2021, as the pre-trial chamber considered 
the jurisdictional questions, the director of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, 
intensified his efforts to persuade Bensouda not to proceed with the 
investigation.

Cohen's contacts with Bensouda - which were described to the Guardian by 
four people familiar with the prosecutor's contemporaneous accounts of 
the interactions, as well as sources briefed on the Mossad operation - 
had begun several years earlier.

In one of the earliest encounters, Cohen surprised Bensouda when he made 
an unexpected appearance at an official meeting the prosecutor was 
holding with the then DRC president, Joseph Kabila, in a New York hotel 
suite.

Sources familiar with the meeting said that after Bensouda's staff were 
asked to leave the room, the director of the Mossad suddenly appeared 
from behind a door in a carefully choreographed 'ambush'.

After the incident in New York, Cohen persisted in contacting the 
prosecutor, turning up unannounced and subjecting her to unwanted calls. 
While initially amicable, the sources said, Cohen's behaviour became 
increasingly threatening and intimidating.

A close ally of Netanyahu at the time, Cohen was a veteran Mossad 
spymaster and had gained a reputation within the service as a skilled 
recruiter of agents with experience cultivating high-level officials in 
foreign governments.

Accounts of his secret meetings with Bensouda paint a picture in which 
he sought to 'build a relationship' with the prosecutor as he attempted 
to dissuade her from pursuing an investigation that, if it went ahead, 
could embroil senior Israeli officials.

Three sources briefed on Cohen's activities said they understood the spy 
chief had tried to recruit Bensouda into complying with Israel's demands 
during the period in which she was waiting for a ruling from the 
pre-trial chamber.

They said he became more threatening after he began to realise the 
prosecutor would not be persuaded to abandon the investigation. At one 
stage, Cohen is said to have made comments about Bensouda's security and 
thinly veiled threats about the consequences for her career if she 
proceeded. Contacted by the Guardian, Cohen and Kabila did not respond 
to requests for comment. Bensouda declined to comment.

When she was prosecutor, Bensouda formally disclosed her encounters with 
Cohen to a small group within the ICC, with the intention of putting on 
record her belief that she had been 'personally threatened', sources 
familiar with the disclosures said.

This was not the only way Israel sought to place pressure on the 
prosecutor. At around the same time, ICC officials discovered details of 
what sources described as a diplomatic 'smear campaign', relating in 
part to a close family member.

According to multiple sources, the Mossad had obtained a cache of 
material including transcripts of an apparent sting operation against 
Bensouda's husband. The origins of the material - and whether it was 
genuine - remain unclear.

However, elements of the information were circulated by Israel among 
western diplomatic officials, sources said, in a failed attempt to 
discredit the chief prosecutor. A person briefed on the campaign said it 
gained little traction among diplomats and amounted to a desperate 
attempt to 'besmirch' Bensouda's reputation.


Trump's campaign against the ICC

In March 2020, three months after Bensouda referred the Palestine case 
to the pre-trial chamber, an Israeli government delegation reportedly 
held discussions in Washington with senior US officials about 'a joint 
Israeli-American struggle' against the ICC.

One Israeli intelligence official said they regarded Donald Trump's 
administration as more cooperative than that of his Democratic 
predecessor. The Israelis felt sufficiently comfortable to ask for 
information from US intelligence about Bensouda, a request the source 
said would have been 'impossible' during Barack Obama's tenure.

Days before the meetings in Washington, Bensouda had received 
authorisation from the ICC's judges to pursue a separate investigation 
into war crimes in Afghanistan committed by the Taliban and both Afghan 
and US military personnel.

Fearing US armed forces would be prosecuted, the Trump administration 
was engaged in its own aggressive campaign against the ICC, culminating 
in the summer of 2020 with the imposition of US economic sanctions on 
Bensouda and one of her top officials.

Among ICC officials, the US-led financial and visa restrictions on court 
personnel were believed to relate as much to the Palestine investigation 
as to the Afghanistan case. Two former ICC officials said senior Israeli 
officials had expressly indicated to them that Israel and the US were 
working together.

At a press conference in June that year, senior Trump administration 
figures signalled their intention to impose sanctions on ICC officials, 
announcing they had received unspecified information about 'financial 
corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels of the office of the 
prosecutor'.

As well as referring to the Afghanistan case, Mike Pompeo, Trump's 
secretary of state, linked the US measures to the Palestine case. 'It's 
clear the ICC is only putting Israel in [its] crosshairs for nakedly 
political purposes,' he said. Months later, Pompeo accused Bensouda of 
having 'engaged in corrupt acts for her personal benefit'.

The US has never publicly provided any information to substantiate that 
charge, and Joe Biden lifted the sanctions months after he entered the 
White House.

But at the time Bensouda faced increasing pressure from an apparently 
concerted effort behind the scenes by the two powerful allies. As a 
Gambian national, she did not enjoy the political protection that other 
ICC colleagues from western countries had by virtue of their 
citizenship. A former ICC source said this left her 'vulnerable and 
isolated'.

Cohen's activities, sources said, were particularly concerning for the 
prosecutor and led her to fear for her personal safety. When the 
pre-trial chamber finally confirmed the ICC had jurisdiction in 
Palestine in February 2021, some at the ICC even believed Bensouda 
should leave the final decision to open a full investigation to her 
successor.

On 3 March, however, months before the end of her nine-year term, 
Bensouda announced a full investigation in the Palestine case, setting 
in motion a process that could lead to criminal charges, though she 
cautioned the next phase could take time.

'Any investigation undertaken by the office will be conducted 
independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favour,' she 
said. 'To both Palestinian and Israeli victims and affected communities, 
we urge patience.'


Khan announces arrest warrants

When Khan took the helm at the ICC prosecutor's office in June 2021, he 
inherited an investigation he later said 'lies on the San Andreas fault 
of international politics and strategic interests'.

As he took office, other investigations - including on events in the 
Philippines, DRC, Afghanistan and Bangladesh - competed for his 
attention, and in March 2022, days after Russia launched its invasion of 
Ukraine, he opened a high-profile investigation into alleged Russian war 
crimes.

Initially, the politically sensitive Palestine inquiry was not treated 
as a priority by the British prosecutor's team, sources familiar with 
the case said. One said it was in effect 'on the shelf' - but Khan's 
office disputes this and says it established a dedicated investigative 
team to take the inquiry forward.

In Israel, the government's top lawyers regarded Khan - who had 
previously defended warlords such as the former Liberian president 
Charles Taylor - as a more cautious prosecutor than Bensouda. One former 
senior Israeli official said there was 'lots of respect' for Khan, 
unlike for his predecessor. His appointment to the court was viewed as a 
'reason for optimism', they said, but they added that the 7 October 
attack 'changed that reality'.

The Hamas assault on southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants 
killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped about 250 people, clearly 
involved brazen war crimes. So, too, in the view of many legal experts, 
has Israel's subsequent onslaught on Gaza, which is estimated to have 
killed more than 35,000 people and brought the territory to the brink of 
famine through Israel's obstruction of humanitarian aid.

By the end of the third week of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, Khan was 
on the ground at the Rafah border crossing. He subsequently made visits 
to the West Bank and southern Israel, where he was invited to meet 
survivors of the 7 October attack and the relatives of people who had 
been killed.

In February 2024, Khan issued a strongly worded statement that 
Netanyahu's legal advisers interpreted as an ominous sign. In the post 
on X, he in effect warned Israel against launching an assault on Rafah, 
Gaza's southernmost city, where more than 1 million displaced people 
were sheltering at the time.

'I am deeply concerned by the reported bombardment and potential ground 
incursion by Israeli forces in Rafah,' he wrote. 'Those who do not 
comply with the law should not complain later when my office takes 
action.'

The comments stirred alarm within the Israeli government as they 
appeared to deviate from his previous statements about the war, which 
officials had viewed as reassuringly cautious. 'That tweet surprised us 
a lot,' a senior official said.

Concerns in Israel over Khan's intentions escalated last month when the 
government briefed the media that it believed the prosecutor was 
contemplating arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other senior 
officials such as Yoav Gallant.

Israeli intelligence had intercepted emails, attachments and text 
messages from Khan and other officials in his office. 'The subject of 
the ICC climbed the ladder of priorities for Israeli intelligence,' one 
intelligence source said.

It was via intercepted communications that Israel established that Khan 
was at one stage considering entering Gaza through Egypt and wanted 
urgent assistance doing so 'without Israel's permission'.

Another Israeli intelligence assessment, circulated widely in the 
intelligence community, drew on surveillance of a call between two 
Palestinian politicians. One of them said Khan had indicated that a 
request for arrest warrants of Israeli leaders could be imminent, but 
warned he was 'under tremendous pressure from the United States'.

It was against this backdrop that Netanyahu made a series of public 
statements warning a request for arrest warrants could be imminent. He 
called on 'the leaders of the free world to stand firmly against the 
ICC' and 'use all the means at their disposal to stop this dangerous 
move'.

He added: 'Branding Israel's leaders and soldiers as war criminals will 
pour jet fuel on the fires of antisemitism.' In Washington, a group of 
senior US Republican senators had already sent a threatening letter to 
Khan with a clear warning: 'Target Israel and we will target you.'

The ICC, meanwhile, has strengthened its security with regular sweeps of 
the prosecutor's offices, security checks on devices, phone-free areas, 
weekly threat assessments and the introduction of specialist equipment. 
An ICC spokesperson said Khan's office had been subjected to 'several 
forms of threats and communications that could be viewed as attempts to 
unduly influence its activities'.

Khan recently disclosed in an interview with CNN that some elected 
leaders had been 'very blunt' with him as he prepared to issue arrest 
warrants. ''This court is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin,' is 
was what a senior leader told me.'

Despite the pressure, Khan, like his predecessor in the prosecutor's 
office, chose to press ahead. Last week, Khan announced he was seeking 
arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant alongside three Hamas leaders 
for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He said Israel's prime minister and defence minister stood accused of 
responsibility for extermination, starvation, the denial of humanitarian 
relief supplies and deliberate targeting of civilians.

Standing at a lectern with two of his top prosecutors - one American, 
the other British - at his side, Khan said he had repeatedly told Israel 
to take urgent action to comply with humanitarian law.

'I specifically underlined that starvation as a method of war and the 
denial of humanitarian relief constitute Rome statute offences. I could 
not have been clearer,' he said. 'As I also repeatedly underlined in my 
public statements, those who do not comply with the law should not 
complain later when my office takes action. That day has come.'

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