ICC lawyer linked to Netanyahu advisor warned Khan to drop war crimes probe or be ‘destroyed'
The warning was delivered to Karim Khan by Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court who told Khan he had spoken to Netanyahu's legal advisor and, according to a note of the meeting lodged on file at the ICC and seen by Middle East Eye, was 'authorised' to make him a proposal that would allow Khan to 'climb down the tree'.
He told Khan to apply to the court to reclassify the warrants and underlying information as 'confidential'.
This, it was suggested, would allow Israel to access the details of the allegations, which it could not do at the time, and challenge them in private – without the outcome being made public.
But Kaufman warned that if it emerged the chief prosecutor was applying for more arrest warrants, for far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their promotion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, then 'all options would be off the table".
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Kaufman told Khan: 'They will destroy you and they will destroy the court.'
Khan and his wife, who also attended the meeting, both understood this to be a threat, according to the note of the meeting seen by MEE.
Kaufman told MEE: 'I do not deny that I told Mr Khan that he should be looking for a way to extricate himself from his errors. I am not authorised to make any proposals on behalf of the Israeli government nor did I.'
Kaufman said he had told Khan he feared that bringing more arrest warrants would encourage further US sanctions that would risk destroying the court, and that adopting a policy like 'Samson' and bringing the whole court down on him and its employees would not serve the purpose for which the court was conceived.
Netanyahu's office did not respond to requests for comment.
At the time of the meeting, Khan was facing investigation over sexual misconduct claims. Two weeks later Khan stepped down on indefinite leave following the publication by the Wall Street Journal of new and more serious sexual assault allegations.
This followed a failed attempt to have him suspended, with a United Nations probe into the allegations ongoing – and just as he was reportedly preparing to seek arrest warrants for more members of the Israeli government.
Khan has strenuously denied all the allegations against him.
Middle East Eye can exclusively reveal details of the prosecutor's meeting with Kaufman on 1 May this year at a hotel in The Hague, the Dutch capital which hosts the ICC.
Kaufman is an ICC defence lawyer whose current work includes representing Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines currently in ICC custody and facing trial on a charge of crimes against humanity over the deaths of thousands of people during Duterte's so-called 'war on drugs'.
The meeting came as Khan faced mounting pressure over his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories, which had led to the court issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024.
'Snakes in the grass'
According to the note seen by MEE, Kaufman texted Khan at 10.48pm on 26 April, to offer to meet up with him to share 'an insight into the Israeli mentality regarding the current state of litigation'.
Kaufman told Khan he had been contacted by a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He said he had refused to cooperate but he did talk to the reporter extensively about Palestine because the reporter had heard that Kaufman had been 'informally/indirectly advising Gallant'.
Kaufman said that he was not interested in discussing the 'scandalous allegations people raise' and said it was sad that he had 'to deal with the snakes in the grass in your own office'.
'I felt myself at liberty to tell him my personal views on the Palestine situation and the case against the Israeli officials which I felt had brought the court into serious disrepute'
- Nicholas Kaufman
He asked to meet the following week and Khan agreed.
Kaufman told MEE he is not advising Gallant. He said he had spoken to the Wall Street Journal journalist but had told him that he knew nothing about allegations that Khan had sexually harassed a woman in his office.
He said he had told Khan he was not interested in discussing the allegations. He said by 'snakes in the grass', he was referring to people at the court who were joking about the allegations and whose conduct he considered to be scandalous.
He told MEE he had offered Khan a meeting "because as an Israeli ICC lawyer, who had experienced the shock of 7.10.23, I was well placed to understand the matter', and because he knew that Khan was 'under fire' over the Palestine investigation.
He said: 'As friends, we had known each other for years, so I felt myself at liberty to tell him my personal views on the Palestine situation and the case against the Israeli officials which I felt had brought the court into serious disrepute.'
On the evening of Tuesday 29 April, Kaufman told Khan he had spoken that afternoon to Roy Schondorf, Netanyahu's legal advisor. According to the note, Khan agreed to meet him for a coffee while he was out with his family.
They met, joined by Khan's wife, Shyamala Alagendra, at 6.30pm on Thursday at the Hotel Des Indes.
The Hotel Des Indes in The Hague on 13 October 2017 (Wikimedia Commons)
According to the note, Kaufman told Khan he considered him a friend and said he had his differences with Netanyahu.
However, he continued, that in his view Khan should have 'gone for lower level suspects' because, he said, by indicting Netanyahu and Gallant he had 'basically indicted Israel'.
Kaufman also mentioned he was in contact with Netanyahu's adviser, Schondorf, and knew Khan had also met him.
Khan told Kaufman that he would neither confirm nor deny 'any meetings I may have'.
'Well I know you have,' Kaufman replied.
Kaufman confirmed to MEE that he had spoken to Schondorf.
US threatens ICC: Drop Israel war crimes probe or 'all options on the table' Read More »
He said: 'Roy Schondorf, like me, is an Israeli lawyer and extremely knowledgeable of ICC affairs. In fact, he is one of a handful of Israeli lawyers who knows how the court works. We gossip frequently about the ICC and I told him that I would be meeting Karim Khan.'
Schondorf did not respond to a request for comment.
According to the note, Kaufman then made a proposal that 'he said he was authorised to make' – a way, as he put it, for Khan to 'climb down the tree'.
He told Khan to apply to the court to reclassify the warrants and underlying information as 'confidential'.
This, it was suggested, would allow Israel to access the details of the allegations, which it could not do at the time, and challenge them in private – without the outcome being made public.
Kaufman asked Khan if a recent report that he was preparing warrant applications for Israeli suspects related to the West Bank was true.
The conversation took place before it was reported that Khan's office was preparing further arrest warrants for far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their promotion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Khan did not respond to Kaufman's question but asked why Israel did not 'proceed with complementarity', which would entail investigating the alleged war crimes in the domestic courts.
He said the Israeli attorney general 'can easily look into this'.
Kaufman said this was impossible, but told him there could be a 'non-criminal, non-investigative process' and Khan could give the evidence he had to that 'Israeli process'.
But he warned that these options would be 'off the table' if it emerged that Khan had applied for more warrants.
According to the note, Kaufman also told Khan that if the existing warrants were not withdrawn, or if he applied for more warrants, 'they will destroy you and they will destroy the court'.
The note records that after the meeting, Khan's wife, who is also a lawyer, said to him, 'That was a clear threat.' Khan agreed.
Kaufman told MEE: 'There was absolutely no threat.'
He said that he had no authority to make any proposals to Khan on behalf of Netanyahu's office.
UK lobbying US against sanctioning ICC over Israel war crimes probe Read More »
'I have no authority to make any offers such that I can take them off the table. Clearly Mr Khan thinks that I am more powerful than I am.'
Kaufman confirmed to MEE that he had suggested to Khan that he should reclassify the warrants as confidential so that Israel could challenge the substance of the case.
He said he believed Khan was 'clearly afraid to do so. He would have agreed if he was sufficiently confident of his evidence.'
Kaufman told MEE he had not suggested to Khan that he could give evidence to a 'non-criminal, non-investigative process' in Israel and said this did not make legal sense.
He said: 'What I did say was that Karim Khan should trust Israel's civil society to fight for accountability in the local courts.'
The meeting took place less than two weeks before the Wall Street Journal published allegations that Khan was accused of sexual assault.
Until then reported allegations against Khan had been of harassment – including Khan 'sexually touching' the complainant, putting his hand in the complainant's pocket and demanding to be let into her hotel room in the middle of the night.
Khan has denied all allegations. There is no suggestion of any connection between the Kaufman-Khan meeting and the publication of the Wall Street Journal allegations.
Sanctions and threats
The revelations about the warning delivered to Khan by Kaufman come with the prosecutor and the court facing unprecedented pressure from the US over the ICC's investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.
Khan was sanctioned by the US in February, and four ICC judges were sanctioned in June over their role in issuing the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
In comments to Israel's Kan public broadcaster last month, Kaufman described the sanctioning of the judges as a 'further warning shot across the bows' of the ICC which he said was 'meant to be designed to encourage the dropping of the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Gallant'.
Numerous reports in the US and British media have claimed that Khan sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on 20 May 2024 to win support in the context of sexual misconduct allegations against him.
The Wall Street Journal claimed in an editorial on 16 May this year that Khan had used the arrest warrants to 'distract from his own behaviour'. It described the ICC's case against Netanyahu as 'tainted'.
Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe Read More »
But in fact, as previously reported by MEE, the prosecutor's decision to apply for warrants was made six weeks before allegations were made against him in late April.
MEE has been told by multiple sources that on 16 March 2024, Khan's extensive team of lawyers and researchers had decided they would be in a position to apply for warrants by the end of April.
On 25 March, Khan informed the US administration of his decision and forewarned them the warrants would be applied for by the end of April.
Over the following two months, pressure on Khan mounted.
On 23 April David Cameron, then the British foreign secretary, threatened in a phone call with Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
Last month MEE revealed details of the call, in which Cameron told Khan applying for the warrants would be like 'dropping a hydrogen bomb'.
The British Foreign Office and Khan both declined to comment in response to the report, while Cameron did not respond to multiple requests by MEE for comment.
Khan faced more pressure from other sources. In a virtual meeting with ICC officials in May, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened sanctions against them if Khan applied for the warrants, according to British barrister Andrew Cayley, who oversaw the ICC's Palestine investigation.
These threats would not dissuade Khan from applying for the warrants.
It was on 29 April 2024, over a month after the decision to apply for warrants was made, that one of Khan's staff made harassment allegations against him.
The allegations were referred to the court's Internal Oversight Mechanism (IOM), its investigative body, on 3 May.
But an investigation was closed days later after the woman said she did not want to cooperate with it.
This means that when Khan announced he was applying for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on 20 May, there was no investigation against him.
Months later, in October, as speculation began to increase that ICC judges would soon issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, an anonymous account on social media platform X began circulating details of the sexual misconduct allegations against Khan.
UN urged to take legal action at ICJ to uphold Francesca Albanese's immunity Read More »
According to the Wall Street Journal, an anonymous source also sent information about the allegations to journalists in an email that contained the phone numbers of the complainant and an advisor to Khan, Thomas Lynch, next to the Hebrew word for telephones.
The IOM then opened another investigation, which was closed in early November.
Two investigations into the allegations had been opened and closed when the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) opened its own external investigation, which is ongoing.
Since being subjected to sanctions by the US in February, Khan has had his American visa revoked and his wife and children have been banned from travelling to the country. His bank accounts have also been frozen in the UK.
Khan declined to comment on the matters raised in this article. He has repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
The ICC also finds itself in a precarious position.
In a further threat to the court last week, the US State Department's legal advisor Reed Rubinstein warned that 'all options remain on the table' unless all arrest warrants and the investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes are dropped.
The US also last week imposed sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, who it said had 'directly engaged' with the ICC.
If the US sanctions the court as an institution, as some experts believe it might, it would prevent many banks and software companies from dealing with it – potentially crippling the ICC's ability to function.
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