The former head of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in secret meetings aimed at pressuring her to abandon a war crimes investigation, the Guardian reveals.
Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with Fatou Bensouda, the ICC’s then-prosecutor, occurred in the years leading up to her decision to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories.
This investigation, initiated in 2021, reached a critical point last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced he was seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's conduct in its war in Gaza. The prosecutor's move to apply for arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders is a development Israel’s military and political leaders have long feared.
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