Benyamin Netanyahu suspected of having organized a system of espionage and pressure on the ICC

According to a vast investigation by the Israeli online media “972” and the British daily “The Guardian”, the Israeli Prime Minister has taken steps over the past ten years to prevent the ICC from prosecuting Israelis for “war crimes”.

Revelations which could cause Benyamin Netanyahu’s government to waver a little more. According to an in-depth investigation by Israeli online media 972 and the British daily The Guardianthe successive Israeli governments of Benjamin Netanyahu have increased pressure over the last ten years on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) so that he renounces prosecuting Israelis for “war crimes”.

These two journalistic investigations are based on dozens of confidential sources, mainly members of the Israeli intelligence services to 972 – the great specialty of online magazine -, but also members of the prosecution and collaborators of the chief prosecutor of the ICC to The Guardian.

A non-signatory to the Rome Statute, Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority has been associated since 2015 and has referred hundreds of complaints to the prosecutor’s office concerning abuses that took place in the West Bank, Jerusalem or Gaza, particularly during the 2014 war.

However, it was from that moment on that the Israelis deployed the big game, according to the two investigations: systematic spying on all the evidence examined by the Prosecutor at the time, the Gambian Fatou Bensouda; attempted compromise of the head of the ICC Prosecutor’s Office… The boss of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, close to Benyamin Netanyahu, even went so far as to directly threaten Fatou Bensouda, evoking “risks to the security of the Prosecutor or that of her family” if it had to take decisions such as launching prosecutions, reports the Guardian citing some indirect witnesses.

The arrival of the British Karim Kahn as Chief Prosecutor of the ICC in 2021 has not changed anything: systematic spying by the Mossad of the prosecutor’s office continued, confirm several agents or former agents of the Mossad. The pressures also undoubtedly.

Moreover, when he announced that he was requesting five arrest warrants on May 20 – two targeting the Israeli Prime Minister and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, at the same time as three Hamas leaders, for “suspicions of war crime and crime against humanity”, Karim Kahn warned that he would not hesitate to act against any threat that persists against the ICC and its investigations.