ICC Suspends Its Star Prosecutor, Who Sought To Arrest Netanyahu

As the International Criminal Court suspends its most powerful official, Prosecutor Karim Khan, is it time to reopen his most celebrated case, which led to arrest warrants against top Israeli officials?Members of the Hague-based ICC, a court that considers itself a crowning achievement of all of “human civilization,” announced on Monday the suspension of its top prosecutor. The 55-year-old Mr. Khan is under an investigation on allegations of sexual abuse, including unwanted advances and sexual misconduct with an aide. Mr. Khan denies any wrongdoing. The 21-member Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC decided on Monday to suspend Mr. Khan. The decision follows findings by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services of “factual evidence” to substantiate allegations of sexual misconduct. The evidence of wrongdoing might undermine Mr. Khan’s most well-known case.In other jurisdictions the arrest warrants that Mr. Khan initiated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defense minister Yoav Gallant might be dismissed as the fruit of the poisonous tree. It “raises serious questions about the circumstances surrounding his shocking decision,” the executive director at UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, tells the Sun.Global arrest warrants against the Israelis were approved by ICC judges in November 2024. Since then the court’s 125 member countries became obliged to arrest the Israeli premier and the former minister once they step foot on their soil. The Israelis would then be dragged to The Hague to be prosecuted, presumably by Mr. Khan’s acting lieutenants. Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. Yet several world leaders, including Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said they would arrest the two Israelis. The New York mayor’s claim that he would comply with “international law” is likely invalid. That is because America — like Russia, Communist China, and India — isn’t an ICC member.Israel isn’t a court member either, a fact that according to ICC critics invalidates the case against Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant. “Outregeous,” is how President Biden described the court’s judges decision to endorse Mr. Khan’s recommendation to arrest the two Israelis alongside three dead Hamas terrorists. “Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” Mr. Biden said in a November, 2024 statement. “Unelected bureaucrats prosecute elected heads of state of nonmember states but won’t allow for prosecution of one of their own,” a professor at George Mason University, Eurgene Kontorovich, writes on X. The circumstances that led to Mr. Khan’s suspension on Monday could further weaken the case against the two Israelis. The female aide’s complaint against the prosecutor was filed with an ICC internal body in May 2024. On the eve of that filing Mr. Khan made the headline-grabbing announcement on a CNN show hosted by Christiane Amanpour. The public nature of the announcement shocked Israeli officials. The Jerusalem foreign ministry was quietly negotiating with Mr. Khan at the time, hoping to present a defense against allegations that Israelis committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in a war launched by Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023. Mr. Khan indicated that he would visit Israel on a fact-finding mission.Mr. Khan “was in conversation with Israel,” Mr. Neuer says. “It was understood he was going to be visiting Israel. And then suddenly he announces these indictments on television on the eve of that complaint being filed.” The complaint, which was obtained later by The Guardian and other publications, is filled with lurid details of unwanted sexual advances in hotel rooms toward a lawyer underling who accompanied Mr. Khan. Mr. Khan denied the allegations but last May he took a leave of absence. The ICC then removed the prosecutor from high profile cases, including against the Philippines former president, Rodrigo Duterte. “The bureau emphasises that this suspension is not an indication of the final outcome,” the ICC members said in a statement on issuing their decision on Monday. They referred the case against Mr. Khan to the entire assembly of the court’s members states. The ICC presidency “takes note” of its member states’ decision to suspend Mr. Khan, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The statement, though, went on to highlight the virtues of a court that is widely criticized as ineffective, biased, and unaccountable. “The Presidency recalls that the International Criminal Court is one of the most significant achievements of human civilisation,” it said in its statement.

ICC Suspends Its Star Prosecutor, Who Sought To Arrest Netanyahu

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