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Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry

Mossad director Yossi Cohen personally involved in secret plot to pressure Fatou Bensouda to drop Palestine investigation, sources say

Harry Davies in Jerusalem
Tue 28 May 2024 08.30 CEST


The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.

Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.

The prosecutor’s decision to apply to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, alongside three Hamas leaders, is an outcome Israel’s military and political establishment has long feared.

Cohen’s personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took place when he was the director of the Mossad. His activities were authorised at a high level and justified on the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against military personnel, according to a senior Israeli official.

Another Israeli source briefed on the operation against Bensouda said the Mossad’s objective was to compromise the prosecutor or enlist her as someone who would cooperate with Israel’s demands.

A third source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as Netanyahu’s “unofficial messenger”.

Cohen, who was one of Netanyahu’s closest allies at the time and is emerging as a political force in his own right in Israel, personally led the Mossad’s involvement in an almost decade-long campaign by the country to undermine the court.

Four sources confirmed that Bensouda had briefed a small group of senior ICC officials about Cohen’s attempts to sway her, amid concerns about the increasingly persistent and threatening nature of his behaviour.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry

Nikki Hailey in Israel scribbling "FINISH THEM"on the shells that the IDF is about to fire into Rafah in defiance of the International Court of Justice. Biden provided the shells, Republicans autograph them. The US political class is united in its complicity with this genocide. pic.twitter.com/hejqVAjq8M

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) May 28, 2024

Spoiler:

The New York Times (NYT) are reporting that bombs used in an Israeli airstrike that caused a huge blaze at a tented area for displaced people in Rafah on Sunday and killed at least 45 people, were made in the US.

It cites visual evidence reviewed by the NYT and weapon experts. The NYT write:

   Munition debris filmed at the strike location the next day was remnants from a GBU-39, a bomb designed and manufactured in the United States, The Times found. US officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.”

Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance disposal technician and one of the experts quoted in the NYT piece, identified the weapon on X.

Israeli tanks conducted a second day of probing attacks across Rafah on Wednesday, after Washington said the assault did not amount to a major ground incursion of the southern Gazan city that US officials had told Israel to avoid, reports Reuters.

According to the news agency, Israeli tanks advanced to the heart of Rafah for the first time on Tuesday after a night of heavy bombardment, defying an appeal from the international court of justice (ICJ) to end its attack on the city, one of the last places of refuge in Gaza.

The US, Israel’s closest ally, reiterated its opposition to a major Israeli ground offensive in Rafah but said on Tuesday it did not believe such an operation was under way.

Unlike tactics used in Israel’s ground offensive in the rest of Gaza, Rafah residents told Reuters that Israeli tanks mounted raids into Tel al-Sultan in western Rafah and Yibna and near Shaboura in the centre before retreating to positions near the border with Egypt.

BREAKING: Israeli National Security Advisor says fighting in Gaza will continue for at least another 7 month

good lord, man. why must you use the human traditions of thousands of years to argue for such things. pic.twitter.com/DwSUWxCP2S

— CARRIERHASARRIVED (@NOTANIDLETHREAT) May 30, 2024

BREAKING:

The US Congress passes a landmark bill aimed at sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) for pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials. pic.twitter.com/jBkgkGFGFx

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 4, 2024

Erős Pista wrote:Jbt.

U ovakvim trenucima razumem Disija.