Exclusive: Karim Khan says he would cooperate with an inquiry into Cameron's alleged ICC threat

“Exclusive: Karim Khan says he would cooperate with an inquiry into Cameron's alleged ICC threat Submitted by Imran Mulla on Thu, 05/07/2026 - 14:44 ICC prosecutor details 2024 call in which he said Cameron threatened to defund the court in interview with MEE Britain's former Prime Minister David Cameron leaves after a keynote discussion at the two-day Copenhagen Democracy Summit at the Royal Danish Playhouse in Copenhagen on May 13, 2025. (AFP) Off The British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has confirmed he would cooperate with an inquiry into the April 2024 phone call between himself and then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, in which he has said Cameron threatened to defund the ICC if he pursued arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Karim Khan revealed details of his call with Cameron, a former British prime minister who is now a peer in the House of Lords, in an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye this week. MEE first reported last June that on 23 April 2024, weeks before Khan applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Cameron phoned Khan and threatened that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued warrants for Israeli leaders. Since then, numerous British MPs have urged a Foreign Office investigation into the call and a Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry. The Foreign Office has repeatedly refused to comment on the matter. Speaking to MEE this week, Khan would not say whether he thought there should be a British government investigation into the call. “Others must decide what, if anything, to do,” he said. However, the prosecutor confirmed that if the Foreign Affairs Select Committee held an inquiry into the phone call and asked him to give evidence, “of course I would consider it and cooperate". He described the conversation with Cameron as “difficult”. Khan said Cameron had told him “that I'd lost the plot, or I'd be thought to have lost the plot if we went forward [with the warrants] in the way that he had heard. "There were a number of questions that were posed, and consequences were, or likely consequences, were conveyed to me in what was a difficult conversation.” 'I was left in no doubt' MEE reported last year that Cameron told Khan that issuing the warrants would be like dropping a "hydrogen bomb" and that the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”. Khan said: “Clearly, [Cameron] was unhappy with what he had heard and that it was going to cause difficulties from his perspective. “And, you know, I was left in no doubt that, of course, the UK is one of the biggest funders of the court, and the United Kingdom, his [Conservative] party, the governing party at the time, as he put it, and also the United States, may think that I would lose the dressing room, in the political dressing room. That would lead to some difficulties. “And of course he was right.” Leading international law experts have told MEE that Cameron's alleged behaviour could constitute a criminal offence under Article 70 of the Rome Statute, which prohibits interference with the administration of justice. Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe Read More » "A threat against the ICC, direct or indirect, is an obstruction of justice," Francesca Albanese, the UN's special rapporteur on Palestine, said last year. "It's incredibly serious that someone in a position of power might have had the audacity to do that." But how did Khan, who is British, feel? “I love this country and I'm a great admirer of the British legal system," he said. "I owe everything to it. I'm very proud to be a member of the bar. And I think the United Kingdom, if it stands for anything, it stands for the law.” Khan went on: “We're no longer the huge military power that we were… economically and post-Brexit we're in a certain place. We have remarkable men and women in this country and there's a spirit of fairness, there's a spirit of fair play, and there's something that actually should never be lost, or it should be repaired, which is fidelity to international agreements and international treaties. “Because if your word is your bond, that's exactly what applies at the international level. So I felt very sad when I had that conversation, because from somebody that was a former prime minister, I expected more. “I thought he would know better,” Khan reflected. Khan said he did not believe that Cameron would have threatened a prosecutor or a court official in the UK in the same way, referring to the police investigation into Downing Street parties in breach of Covid regulations during Boris Johnson’s premiership. “I don't think he would have spoken to an attorney general or a director of public prosecutions in that manner, regarding Partygate or something on those lines. It wouldn't be acceptable,” he said. 'Differences of recollection' Khan said the call was “disappointing because we want the United Kingdom and every country, actually, of the world equally, to represent the best of itself, which includes compliance with international law and obligations, and respect to public servants that are seeking, with whatever limitations they have, to serve the public good or the international good”. “We need to protect judges and prosecutors domestically, and the same applies internationally.” In an account of the episode in MEE journalist Peter Oborne's book, Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza , a source close to Cameron said that the call with Khan did take place and was “robust”. Jeremy Corbyn urges investigation into report David Cameron threatened ICC's Karim Khan Read More » But the source said that rather than making a threat, Cameron pointed out that strong voices in the Conservative Party would push for defunding the ICC and withdrawing from the Rome Statute. MEE put this to Khan. Could this be a valid interpretation of the conversation? Khan said there “can be differences of recollection”, but said “there was somebody else on the call in my office, there was somebody else on his side". Although the British Foreign Office has previously said that Khan “was the only person present on the call”, MEE has reported that, in fact, Cameron’s special assistant, Baroness Liz Sugg, was also listening to the call. Khan insisted that “it was a call with a purpose, which was to offer views about the wisdom or appropriateness of going forward in the direction that had been relayed already to the United Kingdom”. Humza Yousaf, who was the first minister of Scotland when Cameron made the call to Khan, told MEE in January: “The UK government must come clean. The more they try to obfuscate and obstruct, the clearer it becomes they have something to hide.” Yousaf urged Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to “release all the correspondence in relation to the call that took place between Lord Cameron and Karim Khan, and instigate an independent investigation into what took place at the time.” Labour MPs Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain wrote to the government in December saying the seriousness of the allegations demanded a “clear, transparent and independent examination” of whether ministers or senior officials sought to interfere with the ICC. Labour government refuses to comment MEE revealed in January that the government had refused to comment on the matter in response to a letter sent in July 2025 by Labour MP Andy Slaughter to then-foreign secretary David Lammy, asking whether the allegations against Cameron would be investigated. Middle East minister Hamish Falconer responded on 26 November. In his letter, seen by MEE, he said: “It is not the practice of this Government to comment on the actions of previous Governments on such matters. The UK Government’s position is that it respects the role and independence of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is the primary international institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes of international concern.” In his interview with MEE this week, Khan detailed the extraordinary threats and pressure he says he has faced in connection to his investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. The chief prosecutor went on extended leave last May pending the outcome of a United Nations investigation into the allegations against him. In March, MEE reported that a panel of judges appointed by the ASP bureau to review the UN investigation had concluded it had not established any "misconduct or breach of duty" by Khan. But the prosecutor has still not returned to his duties after a group of disproportionately western and European states voted at a bureau meeting to disregard the panel of judges and re-investigate the case. He accused members of the bureau of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the ICC’s governing body, of subverting basic legal principles by ignoring the conclusions of the investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, which they had commissioned, when it concluded that there had been no wrongdoing by Khan. UK Politics News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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