It was “humiliating” to be called “a mossad plant,” she said to Khan, according to a recording that she made of the call. “I essentially lost all friends I had in court … I don’t know where to look for … I just think it’s time for me to go.”
Khan warned him more than once of “wolves around us”. The call lasted an hour and, during that, he asked six times if she recorded their conversation. (She lied and said no.) But her tone was favorable; He encouraged her to take the time of leave she needed and continue to pay on medical leave. Sometimes he looked confident that he was innocent of all misconduct, reminding him several times that it was his choice if she wanted to launch a more complete investigation, including him. “The truth will come out,” he assured. However, at other times, he looked impatient to be able to continue a complaint against him. He told her that speculation on this subject was to “keep things alive”, and he urged her to officially clarify that she did not intend to accuse her of inappropriate behavior. “Then, it’s indeed finished,” he said, and the ICC could end the “food frenzy” saying to journalists: “Fuck off now-, release it alone.”
“Things are pushed,” Khan told him, by forces to “get rid of the mandates of Palestine, get rid of mandates for Russia, get rid of the whole court.” Khan and the Malaysian were both married, and he warned him that a misconduct of misconduct would not only harm the woman and her family, and to Khan and her family. The “victims” would also include “the judge of the victims who, finally, are at the dawn of progress”.
Ninety minutes after the end of the call, an anonymous account X started to flee the details of the same second-hand report which had been included in the anonymous e-mail. Stories appeared in the media, including an editorial in the Wall Street JournalOn October 23, 2024, who reported that the woman had accused Khan of “locking her in her office and touching her sexually”, of “visiting her hotel room in the middle of the night, of asking to be let in” and “pretending to have a headache and to sleep on her hotel bed, to touch her sexually”. A few weeks later, the CPI director of the ICC requested an external investigation. As the UN started one, the woman leveled an even more serious allegation: that Khan had forced her several times to “coercive” sex. (Khan, who denied any fault, refused requests for an interview.)
The selective leaks of the ambiguous telephone call – in particular, Khan’s references to the Palestinians and the other victims “at the dawn of progress” – have improbably linked the allegation of sexual violence of women with the international struggle on power for Israeli arrest warrants. Khan and his lawyers argued that Netanyahu and her allies exploit a vulnerable woman in order to discredit the case against Israeli leaders. Netanyahu, in turn, said on several occasions that Khan had asked for the mandates to divert the attention of women’s charges.
Indeed, in a video interview in August with Breitbart, Netanyahu accused Khan of an elaborate program, saying that when Khan learned the allegations of women: “He said:” I am ruined. I have to get out of that in a way “, so he decided that the best way to get out of this was to strike the Jews, or to strike the Prime Minister of the Jewish State.” The rejection of the ICC as “a completely corrupt organization”, and describing the female accuser like a hostile Malaysian in Israel, Netanyahu has charged, without proof, “listen to him,” Israel of these war crimes that your accusations are heard. ”
The Trump administration and Netanyahu allies of the American Congress led by the Republicans have seized the allegations of sexual abuse in the context of a broader defense of Netanyahu and Gallant against the accusations of the ICC. Six days after the call and the flight of October 17, Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, announced that the women’s statements had put “a moral cloud” on Khan’s decision to ask for the mandates. President Trump, in a statement, accused the Court of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close Israel ally” which constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy of the United States”. The United States has now sanctioned Khan, its two deputies and several judges of the ICC – disgusting its assets, blocking its access to the American financial system and restricting its ability to enter the country. Several members of the ICC staff with American ties have resigned.
The international tumult on accusations of sexual abuse culminated in an article this spring in the Wall Street JournalWho reported the allegations of the woman and strongly suggested that Khan had asked for mandates as a tactical deviation. Six days later, Khan took a leave that led to the court to a virtual dead point.
The attempted liaison of allegations of sexual assault and Israeli mandates is in contradiction with many facts. The pursuit of Khan of the mandates was hardly new or secret. A team of lawyers from the prosecutor’s office had worked for several months on an investigation into the Israel assault against Gaza. Because the Israel accusation of serious misdeeds was so explosive – Khan described it in Amanpour as “San Andreas’ fault of international policy and strategic interests” – he also had, in January 2024, the unorthodox choice to request a second opinion of an external panel of experts.
This panel included two former judges who had supervised international criminal courts, a former legal adviser from the British Foreign Office, and Amal Clooney, a Lebanese human rights lawyer and the wife of George Clooney. They concluded that there was enough evidence for accusations of war crimes or crimes against humanity on both sides of the Gaza conflict, including at the top of the Israeli chain of command. Lawyers from the CPI prosecutor’s office accepted. The attack led by Hamas on October 7 had killed about twelve hundred people in Israel, including at least eight hundred civilians, and took about two hundred and fifty hostages. In May 2024, the Israeli assault against Gaza had killed more than thirty-five thousand people, many, many of whom are women or children. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least thirty-two Palestinians, including twenty-eight children, died of malnutrition or famine in the hospitals of Gaza. An internationally recognized panel of experts warned that more than a million gasans could soon face catastrophic hunger. (The number of reported deaths has now exceeded sixty thousand; at least four hundred and fifty people died of malnutrition or famine, including one hundred and fifty-one children.)
