Nine years of espionage, hackers and threats: the “war” of Israel against the International Criminal Court
The Guardian investigation: Netanyahu is "obsessed" with wiretaps, he used the Mossad and the Shin Bet to "stop" the Court and its investigations into war crimes in Gaza
ROME – For nine very long years Israel has waged a secret “war” on the International Criminal Court (ICC). Fought with unconventional weapons: classical espionage, hacking, direct and indirect threats to its high-level officials. It has deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, pressure and intimidate the Court in an attempt to derail its investigation into war crimes in Gaza. an international investigation reveals it carried out by the Guardian and the Israeli magazines +972 and Local Call.
For years, the secret services have intercepted the communications of numerous Court officials, including the chief prosecutor Karim Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda: telephone calls, messages, emails and documents. A surveillance that has also continued in recent months, which has provided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with confidential information on the prosecutor’s intentions, including request for international arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the leader of the Palestinian organization Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Netanyahu is described by an intelligence source as “obsessed” with interceptions. Under the supervision of his national security advisors, he engaged the Shin Bet, as well as the military intelligence directorate, Aman, and the cyber-intelligence division, Unit 8200. Most notably a covert operation against Bensouda was conducted personally by Netanyahu’s close ally, Yossi Cohen, who was the director of the Mossad at the time, even making use of the help of the then president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila.
The joint investigation is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli intelligence and government officials, senior ICC figures, diplomats and lawyers familiar with the case.
Since it was established in 2002, the International Criminal Court has served as a permanent court of last resort for the prosecution of some of the world’s worst atrocities. He has promoted accusations against former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the late Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and, most recently, against Vladimir Putin. Israel, like the United States, Russia and China, is not a member.
The Israeli operation, however, comes from afar: it has lasted for almost a decade, a real preventive offensive that began in January 2015, when it was confirmed that Palestine would join the Court after being was recognized as a state by the United Nations General Assembly. The accession was condemned by Israel as a form of “diplomatic terrorism”.
In the investigation, the Guardian also talks about the warnings delivered “by hand” to the former chief prosecutor of the Court, Fatou Bensouda, a respected Gambian lawyer elected in 2012. On 16 January 2015, a few weeks after the accession of Palestine, Bensouda initiated a preliminary examination of what in the court’s legal language was called “the situation in Palestine.” The following month, two men who had managed to obtain the private address of the prosecutor showed up at his home in The Hague. They said they wanted to hand-deliver a letter to Bensouda, on behalf of an unknown German woman who wanted to thank her. The envelope contained hundreds of dollars in cash and a note with an Israeli phone number. Probably – the sources say –Israel was signaling to the public prosecutor that it knew where he lived“.
Five sources familiar with Israeli intelligence activities said the latter routinely spied on phone calls made by Bensouda and his staff with Palestinians. In fact, the court could not access Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, so it was forced to conduct much of its research by telephone. With full access to the Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, intelligence agents intercepted calls without installing spyware on the devices of ICC officials.
A source says there was never any internal hesitation to spy on the prosecutor, adding: “Bensouda, she’s black and African, so who cares?”. According to an Israeli source, a large whiteboard in an Israeli intelligence department contained the names of around 60 people under surveillance – half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including United Nations officials and ICC staff.
According to several current Israeli intelligence officials, the military’s cyber offensive teams and the Shin Bet systematically monitored employees of Palestinian NGOs and the Palestinian Authority who were collaborating with the ICC. The Shin Bet had even installed Pegasus spyware, developed by the private sector NSO Group, on the phones of several Palestinian NGO employees, as well as two senior Palestinian Authority officials.