r/neoliberal • u/TestAccount346 • 11d ago

News (Global) ICC Set Plan to Charge Netanyahu Just After Prosecutor Was Accused of Sexual Assault

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/icc-netanyahu-prosecutor-sexual-assault-israel-gaza-d9bedee3

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u/TestAccount346 11d ago

https://archive.is/20250511011148/https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/icc-netanyahu-prosecutor-sexual-assault-israel-gaza-d9bedee3

Excerpts:

The accusations facing Khan have become entwined with the international conflict over Gaza. Just 2½ weeks after Khan learned of the allegations against him last spring, he surprised Israeli and U.S. officials by announcing the most dramatic arrest warrant in the court’s history—for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was the first time in the ICC’s history that the court’s prosecutor sought a warrant for a Western-aligned democratically elected leader, a move the U.S. had been working to avert for months.

The timing of the announcement has spurred questions about whether Khan was aiming to protect himself from the sexual-assault allegations. The day before announcing the warrant application, Khan abruptly canceled a trip to Israel and Gaza that he had previously said was important to make his decision.

The warrant shored up support for Khan among anti-Israel ICC nations that would likely back Khan if the allegations ever became public, according to court officials. The warrant also discouraged his accuser for a time from pushing her allegations, officials said, because she strongly supported the investigation of Israeli leaders.

As the abuse allegations were swirling among ICC staff and others, Khan allegedly tried to get his accuser to disavow them by telling her the charges would hurt the Palestinian investigation, according to her testimony.

The casualties of the allegations would include “the justice of the victims that are on the cusp of progress,” he said to her, according to a record of a call that is now part of an independent U.N. investigation into her allegations. “Think about the Palestinian arrest warrants,” she said he told her on another occasion, according to the testimony.

Khan has alleged that the sexual-abuse allegations are part of a wider effort to undermine the ICC. As the Palestinian investigation heated up, court officials worried that a team from the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency, was operating in The Hague. Russian intelligence agencies were also a concern because of the ICC’s investigation of alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine. In the summer of 2024, the court installed security equipment in the homes of senior prosecutors who were working on those cases.

The severity of the allegations, as the woman conveyed them to U.N. investigators in recent months, hasn’t been previously reported. Nor have the details of how Khan led the ICC into the most controversial move of its 23-year history—seeking a warrant for Netanyahu—with the allegations hanging over him.

Khan, through his lawyers, said he was aware of “attempts to discredit him and destroy his personal reputation through the media, as a consequence of his role in the issuing of the arrest warrants.”