Former ICC prosecutor says Mossad chief pressured her to stop investigating Israel war crimes
Former ICC prosecutor says Mossad chief pressured her to stop investigating Israel war crimes
Former International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said the then-head of Israel‘s Mossad intelligence agency pressured her in a series of meetings to drop her investigation into alleged war crimes in occupied Palestine.
Bensouda, who served as the ICC’s chief prosecutor from 2012 to 2021, said unidentified men came to her home in The Hague after she opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine in 2015.
“They came directly to my house,” Bensouda told Al Jazeera in an interview published on Sunday. “I got the message that they’re sending.”
She said the men handed her an envelope containing $500 and indicated it was from someone she had helped. Bensouda said she later concluded the gesture was intended to show that those behind it knew where she lived.
Bensouda said she reported the incident to ICC security and Dutch authorities. According to her account, investigators traced telephone numbers associated with the visitors to Israel, though she said no further action appeared to have been taken.
“I felt left alone. I felt unsupported,” she said.
The former prosecutor also described meetings with then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, including one in a New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, which she said focused on the ICC’s Palestine investigation.
‘What was clear was that they did not want the investigations into the situation in Palestine to go on’
– Fatou Bensouda, former ICC chief prosecutor
“What was clear was that they did not want the investigations into the situation in Palestine to go on,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Asked whether Cohen had told her Israel could “take care” of her and warned that proceeding could compromise her family’s security, as previously reported by the Guardian, Bensouda replied: “He did. He did.”
She described the meetings as starting friendly, with what she called “an attempt to win me over”, before hardening into explicit demands that she stop.
Bensouda said she interpreted the encounters as threats against both herself and her family, and linked them to sanctions later imposed on her by the US government.
Impact of sanctions
In September 2020, Donald Trump’s first administration imposed sanctions on Bensouda and another senior ICC official after the court pursued investigations into alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and by Israeli forces in occupied Palestine.
The sanctions included asset freezes and restrictions that Bensouda said severely disrupted her personal and professional life.
“People just think that when you’re sanctioned … you can no longer go to the US. But it goes far beyond that,” she said.
Her account with the UN Federal Credit Union, opened years earlier while she worked at the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was immediately blocked.
Routine transactions became impossible. She said she could not book hotels or make transfers to ICC member states.
Dutch banks, subject to US financial rules, were also affected. The bank holding her mortgage closed her account, she said.
The ICC’s registrar, working with Dutch authorities, eventually arranged for one bank already working with the court to continue receiving her salary. A Dutch bank later stepped in to handle basic transactions, but with limits.
Even after that, transfers to family members could fail when an intermediary “corresponding” bank refused to process them, Bensouda said.
Her son, who lives in The Gambia, also had his bank account blocked, she said.
She also said there were efforts to investigate and monitor her husband, including through photographs and audio recordings. She linked the surveillance to the run-up to her 2020 US sanctions designation. “I also think it had to do with the sanctions,” she said.
The US lifted the sanctions in 2021 shortly after Joe Biden took office. Karim Khan, who succeeded Bensouda later that year, eventually narrowed the Afghanistan investigation to focus on the Taliban and Islamic State, effectively dropping the US strand.
Trump revived sanctions targeting the ICC after returning to office. He signed an executive order in February last year authorising economic and travel sanctions on people who work on ICC investigations of US citizens or American allies such as Israel.
Those sanctioned since then included Khan, his two deputy prosecutors and eight judges.
Bensouda rejected accusations that the ICC disproportionately targeted Africa, saying many of the court’s investigations were initiated at the request of African states themselves.
“People always forget that ICC did not go to Africa to start investigating,” she said. “It was Africa that came to the ICC.”
She defended the court’s mandate and said international justice remained essential despite political resistance and mounting attacks on the institution.
“There will be attempts to make the court disintegrate and fade away,” Bensouda said. “But I know that there are still people, institutions and countries that want justice.”
Bensouda delivered a keynote address last week at the Rights Forum in the Hague, urging the European Union to take action to protect the ICC from threats and sanctions.
She urged the bloc to trigger its blocking statute, the EU regulation that shields European companies and individuals from the extraterritorial effect of foreign sanctions, and to share with the court any gains from its technological autonomy initiatives.
المصدر: Middle East Eye
