ICC chief prosecutor Khan threatened with professional misconduct charge

Khan is seeking arrest warrants against Israel's PM Netanyahu & DM Gallant

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The senior lawyer at the International Criminal Court who previously called for the arrest of Israeli ministers is now facing allegations of professional misconduct himself.

On Aug. 27, three prominent barristers at UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote a letter to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, to refute every point of his legal challenge to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

“As you must appreciate, our concerns go far beyond a few minor details: it appears to us from your Statement that the grounds of the Applications are based in their entirety on false information,” the King’s Counsels Brian Doctor, Jonathan Turner and Natasha Hausdorff wrote.

Since Khan is a member of the British Bar himself, he is bound by the same rules as fellow barristers.

UKLFI warned that they will report Khan to the UK Bar Standards Board if he does not review the evidence for requesting arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, especially in the light of new material that has become available since May.

“This matters to more than just Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant,” said Turner in a press release. “If the prosecutor can have the court issue arrest warrants on the basis of bogus allegations, no one is safe from the risk of arrest and possibly years of imprisonment in The Hague, even if eventually acquitted.”

The barristers requested that Khan respond to their letter within seven days, however, as of Thursday morning, there had been no response. The BBC network's Nick Robinson raised the issue of the UKLFI letter with Khan during his "Political Thinking" podcast, scheduled to air on Saturday.

Khan explained to Robinson that the arrest warrants were issued due to the larger number of Gaza casualties. However, the terrorist-to-civilian ratio has turned out to be approximately 1:1, a rarity in the history of urban warfare.

One of the UKLFI lawyers, Hausdorff, has been vocal in the media since Oct. 7, emphasizing the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect civilians.

Khan stated that in the case of 'Palestine,' the evidence he submitted to the ICC to incriminate Israeli leaders was submitted privately, and that the protesting lawyers were merely “guessing” about the details of the evidence.

Earlier in August, legal experts from five prominent NGOs, including UKLFI, wrote to the ICC: “Since the factual allegations summarised in the Statement (and presumably relied upon in the Applications) are completely false, they do not provide ‘reasonable grounds to believe that [Netanyahu or Gallant] has committed a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court…’” This is point 27 of 31 legal and evidential issues raised by UKLFI, B'nai B'rith UK, the International Legal Forum, the Jerusalemites' Initiative, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

On May 20, Khan announced his intention to seek arrest warrants from the ICC for three Hamas leaders, along with Netanyahu and Gallant. However, the ICC postponed its decision after the UK government challenged the court's jurisdiction in this case.

Subsequently, Britain's new Labour government announced it would drop the challenge, while also restoring funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and suspending certain arms sales to Israel.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel are State Parties to the ICC, but following the brutal murders of six Israeli hostages by Hamas, just as Israeli forces were close to rescuing them, the U.S. announced formal indictments against six Hamas leaders.