How Karim Khan’s Israel war crimes probe was derailed by threats, leaks and sex claims
Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the ICC (C), announces he is seeking arrest warrants from the court’s judges for PM Benjamin Netanyahu and DM Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, 20 May 2024
David Hearst, Imran Mullaand and Simon Hooper report in Middle East Eye on 1 August 2025:
A major Middle East Eye investigation has uncovered extraordinary details of an intensifying intimidation campaign targeting the British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court over his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.
The campaign has involved threats and warnings directed at Karim Khan by prominent figures, close colleagues and family friends briefing against him, fears for the prosecutor’s safety prompted by a Mossad team in The Hague, and media leaks about sexual assault allegations.
It has taken place against the backdrop of Khan’s efforts to build and pursue a case against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials over their conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza and accelerating Israeli settlement expansion and violence against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Last month, Middle East Eye revealed that Khan was warned in May that if the arrest warrants issued last year for Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant were not withdrawn, he and the ICC would be destroyed.
The warning was delivered by Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court, during a meeting with Khan and his wife, Shyamala Alagendra, at a hotel in The Hague.
Kaufman told Khan he had spoken to Netanyahu’s legal advisor and was “authorised” to make him a proposal that would allow Khan to “climb down the tree”, according to a note of the meeting on file at the ICC seen by MEE.
In response to questions from MEE, Kaufman denied threatening Khan. He denied having been authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government and said he had shared his personal views with Khan on the Palestine situation.
The meeting came less than two weeks before allegations of sexual assault against Khan, which he has strenuously denied, were first published, and as he was reportedly preparing to seek arrest warrants for more members of the Israeli government.
Khan went on leave shortly afterwards after an attempt to suspend him, prompted by a senior member of his own office, failed and amid an ongoing United Nations investigation into the allegations against him.
Intense pressure on the prosecutor had been building even before Khan became the subject of the now widely publicised allegations.
MEE can reveal details about correspondence between Khan and the complainant, a female ICC staff member, which appear to raise questions about some of the previously reported claims about the case in American and British media.
In response to questions from MEE, the complainant said she had fully cooperated with the UN investigation and could not “engage with the questions posed or correct the inaccuracies” because she is bound by “obligations of confidentiality and professional integrity”.
Khan has declined to comment to MEE on the matters raised in this article.
The timeline of events reveals that pressure on Khan started to build in April 2024 as he prepared to apply for the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, then again in October, before judges issued the warrants.
It intensified further this year as Khan was reported to be seeking warrants for more Israeli ministers, and coinciding with further media leaks about the sexual assault allegations.
MEE spoke to sources with knowledge of the affair and reviewed material understood to be relevant to the investigation into the allegations currently being conducted by the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).
MEE’s investigation can reveal that:
– In April 2024, weeks before Khan applied for the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron privately threatened Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued warrants for Israeli leaders
– In May 2024, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants
– Before the allegations were made, Khan had received a security briefing that indicated that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was active in The Hague and posed a potential threat to the prosecutor
– The woman accusing Khan of sexual misconduct wrote in May 2024 in text messages to Khan that there were “games being played” and attempts to make her a “pawn in some game I don’t want to play”. Two internal ICC investigations into the allegations were closed after she refused to cooperate with them.