Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed
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
Yuval Abraham and Meron Rapoport report in +972 on 28 May 2024:
For nearly a decade, Israel has been surveilling senior International Criminal Court officials and Palestinian human rights workers as part of a secret operation to thwart the ICC’s probe into alleged war crimes, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.
The multi-agency operation, which dates back to 2015, has seen Israel’s intelligence community routinely surveil the court’s current chief prosecutor Karim Khan, his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, and dozens of other ICC and UN officials. Israeli intelligence also monitored materials that the Palestinian Authority submitted to the prosecutor’s office, and surveilled employees at four Palestinian human rights organizations whose submissions are central to the probe.
According to sources, the covert operation mobilized the highest branches of Israel’s government, the intelligence community, and both the civilian and military legal systems in order to derail the probe.
Fatou Bensouda, former Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
The intelligence information obtained via surveillance was passed on to a secret team of top Israeli government lawyers and diplomats, who traveled to The Hague for confidential meetings with ICC officials in an attempt to “feed [the chief prosecutor] information that would make her doubt the basis of her right to be dealing with this question.” The intelligence was also used by the Israeli military to retroactively open investigations into incidents that were of interest to the ICC, to try to prove that Israel’s legal system is capable of holding its own to account.
Additionally, as the Guardian reported earlier today, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, ran its own parallel operation which sought out compromising information on Bensouda and her close family members in an apparent attempt to sabotage the ICC’s investigation. The agency’s former head, Yossi Cohen, personally attempted to “enlist” Bensouda and manipulate her into complying with Israel’s wishes, according to sources familiar with his activities, causing the then-prosecutor to fear for her personal safety.