The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has been reported to the Bar Standards Board for making allegedly “false” statements about Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in his statement announcing he would pursue arrest warrants for the Israeli leaders.
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has also claimed that Karim Khan KC misled the court by failing to provide it with “exonerating evidence” sent to the ICC by the legal advocacy group.
UKFLI alleged that the chief prosecutor “asked the court to ignore any information or evidence other than the material he originally filed in his applications for arrest warrants”.
This, the legal group claims, breaches the rules of the ICC as well as the Code of Conduct of the English Bar.
On May 20, Khan made a statement announcing applications had been made for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant – as well as Hamas terror chiefs Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and the late Ismail Haniyeh – for alleged war crimes.
“Those applications have not been published,” said UKLFI, “but the prosecutor made a public statement on the day he filed them in which he purported to summarise the grounds on which they were based.”
Those grounds centred around a charge that Israel, under the leadership of Netanyahu and Gallant, “intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival” by imposing a complete siege on the territory.
UKLFI claimed that the allegations relied on a report published on March 18 “which claimed that famine was present in parts of the Gaza Strip and imminent in others”.
A subsequent review published on June 4 by the Famine Review Committee for the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that the March report, “was based on seriously inadequate information and was ‘implausible’”.
Together with a group of other NGOs, UKLFI sent joint observations to the ICC in a lengthy report compiled in early August, alleging that “every phrase of every sentence of a statement of the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor summarising his allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant is untrue”.
Khan filed his response to these observations on August 23, asking the court to proceed to issue the arrest warrants on the basis of his original applications.
In a second letter addressed to Khan on August 27, UKLFI wrote: “We are dismayed to read that you intend to rest on the submissions you advanced in the applications, despite our having shown that every allegation against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant set out in your published summary of them is false, and despite the highly relevant evidence that has emerged since you filed the applications.”
Having received no response, UKLFI has now reported Khan to the Bar Standards Board.
UKLFI has stated that BSB’s guidelines say: “Knowingly misleading the court also includes inadvertently misleading the court if you later realise that you have misled the court, and you fail to correct the position.”
The legal advocacy group has also requested the Registrar of the ICC set in motion a disciplinary investigation for alleged breaches of the ICC’s rules.
UKLFI Chief Executive, Jonathan Turner said the BSB and the ICC should “investigate this apparent misconduct thoroughly”, and pending the outcome of these investigations, the court should not make any rulings relying on any material provided by Khan in this situation.
The OtP told the JC: “The Office of the Prosecutor is aware of the reports regarding the letter by the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The UK Lawyers for Israel have also requested and were granted leave to make observations before the Pre-Trial Chamber pursuant to rule 103 and have done so.
“The merits of the case are sub judice. For this reason, the Office does not mean to engage substantially with the allegations detailed in the letter. With respect to the threat to report alleged concerns to the Bar Standards Board, UKLFI must decide what is appropriate, alive to their own ethical responsibilities and their duty not to mislead.
“The Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC underlines that it will not be improperly influenced by any form of threat and harassment in pursuing its Rome Statute responsibilities independently and impartially.”
