Israel and its spy company Mossad have been concerned in an almost decadelong blackmailing marketing campaign in opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), utilizing strategies of surveillance, hacking, smearing and threatening prosecutors and employees to impede its probe into Tel Aviv’s struggle crimes in Palestine, a report mentioned.
The investigation by the Guardian and magazines +972 and Local Call uncovered the nation’s illegitimate efforts to intervene within the courtroom’s decision-making course of.
Mossad wiretapped ICC officers, together with chief prosecutor Karim Khan and his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, intercepting cellphone conversations, e-mails, paperwork and messages, the Guardian report mentioned.
“I insist that each one makes an attempt to impede, intimidate or improperly affect the officers of this courtroom should stop instantly,” Khan had mentioned when he introduced arrest warrants for Israeli officers and a few Hamas members earlier this month.
Netanyahu has taken a detailed curiosity within the intelligence operations in opposition to the ICC, and was described by one intelligence supply as being “obsessed” with intercepts in regards to the case. Overseen by his nationwide safety advisers, the efforts concerned the home spy company, the Shin Bet, in addition to the army’s intelligence directorate, Aman, and cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200.
Yossi Cohen, former head of Israel’s intelligence company Mossad and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger,” threatened Bensouda, throughout a sequence of covert conferences, pressuring her to desert investigations into Israeli struggle crimes within the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, happened within the years main as much as her resolution to open a proper investigation into alleged struggle crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity in occupied Palestinian territories,” The Guardian mentioned in its report.
That investigation, which started in 2021, culminated final week when Khan, introduced that he was in search of an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for the nation’s actions through the Gaza struggle.
The prosecutor’s resolution to use to the ICC’s pretrial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in addition to three Hamas leaders, is one thing Israel’s army and political institution has lengthy feared, the each day mentioned.
“Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad,” it mentioned.
According to the report, a senior Israeli official’s actions had been sanctioned “at a high level” and justified in mild of the courtroom’s perceived risk of prosecuting army personnel.
The Mossad’s purpose was “to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands,” the UK’s each day mentioned within the report, citing one other Israeli supply accustomed to the threats in opposition to Bensouda.
Cohen, described as one of many prime minister’s “closest allies” and “unofficial messenger,” is claimed to have led Mossad’s function in Israel’s practically decade-long effort to undermine the ICC.
According to 4 sources cited by The Guardian, Bensouda knowledgeable a choose group of senior ICC officers about Cohen’s efforts to exert stress on her, elevating considerations in regards to the “threatening nature of his behaviour.”
Cohen is accused of claiming to the ICC prosecutor: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”
“The Mossad also took a keen interest in Bensouda’s family members and obtained transcripts of secret recordings of her husband, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation. Israeli officials then attempted to use the material to discredit the prosecutor,” the report mentioned.
The ICC case goes again to 2015, when Bensouda started a preliminary examination into the scenario in Palestine, assessing allegations of crimes in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
Source: www.dailysabah.com