ICC Chief Prosecutor Warned He and the Court Will Be ‘Destroyed’ if Netanyahu Arrest Warrant Isn’t Withdrawn: Report

The Hague (Quds News Network)- The British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was reportedly warned that if arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister were not withdrawn, he and the ICC would be “destroyed”.

British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court Nicholas Kaufman warned Karim Khan in May, telling him he had spoken to Netanyahu’s legal advisor and, according to a note of the meeting lodged on file at the ICC and seen by Middle East Eye (MEE), was “authorised” to make him a proposal that would allow Khan to “climb down the tree”.

The lawyer told Khan to apply to the court to reclassify the warrants and underlying information as “confidential”.

This, it was suggested, would allow Israel to access the details of the accusations, which it could not do at the time, and challenge them in private – without the outcome being made public.

But the lawyer warned that if it emerged the chief prosecutor was applying for more arrest warrants, for far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their promotion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, then “all options would be off the table”.

The conversation took place before it was reported that Khan’s office was preparing further arrest warrants for Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

Kaufman told Khan: “They will destroy you and they will destroy the court.”
According to the note of the meeting seen by MEE, Khan and his wife, who also attended the meeting, both understood this to be a threat.

Kaufman told MEE: “I do not deny that I told Mr Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors. I am not authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government nor did I.”

Kaufman said he had told Khan he feared that bringing more arrest warrants would encourage further US sanctions that would risk destroying the court, and that adopting a policy like “Samson” and bringing the whole court down on him and its employees would not serve the purpose for which the court was conceived.

The meeting, MEE said, took place in 1 May this year at a hotel in The Hague, the Dutch capital which hosts the ICC.

Kaufman is an ICC defence lawyer whose current work includes representing Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines currently in ICC custody and facing trial on a charge of crimes against humanity over the deaths of thousands of people during Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs.”

According to the note, Kaufman also told Khan that if the existing warrants were not withdrawn, or if he applied for more warrants, “they will destroy you and they will destroy the court”.

Khan was sanctioned by the US in February, and four ICC judges were sanctioned in June over their role in issuing the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

In comments to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster last month, Kaufman described the sanctioning of the judges as a “further warning shot across the bows” of the ICC which he said was “meant to be designed to encourage the dropping of the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Gallant”.

On 23 April David Cameron, then the British foreign secretary, threatened in a phone call with Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

Last month MEE revealed details of the call, in which Cameron told Khan applying for the warrants would be like “dropping a hydrogen bomb”.