Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Ahmed Khan revealed in a Sept. 5 BBC interview the pressure he has come under for requesting arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (along with three Hamas leaders, at least one of whom has since been killed by Israel).
Khan said that world leaders had pressured him not to seek arrest warrants: “Several leaders and others told me and advised me and cautioned me,” he told BBC.
In May, Khan argued there were reasonable grounds to believe that the defendants had committed war crimes, submitting a request for the arrest warrants to the ICC’s judges. It has been more than three months, and no warrants have been issued. This contrasts with the arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for moving children from war zones: in that case, it took less than a month from the prosecutor’s submission for the judges to issue the arrest warrant.
Putin recently traveled to ICC signatory Mongolia, which greeted him with a red carpet rather than arresting him.
Khan has been contacted by many political “leaders” who have urged, demanded, or suggested that he end the investigation. In the U.K., a pro-Israel legal group threatened to file criminal charges against Khan, claiming that the application for arrest warrants was made under false premises.
“Target Israel, and we will target you,” said a group of Republican U.S. Senators—led by the lunatic Sen. Tom Cotton. Their May statement warned that the prosecution “if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” (Note: the United States is not a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.)
Unlike the International Court of Justice, the ICC is not an organ of the UN.