International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan

International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan says the British government threatened to defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute that helped found it, if the tribunal moved forward with an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The remarks reported widely on Thursday appeared in a submission Khan filed defending his 2024 decision to pursue charges against Netanyahu.

While Khan did not name the British official involved, he said the threat was made during a phone call on 23 April 2024, in which the official said issuing warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant would be "disproportionate."

Media reports have suggested the caller might have been then-foreign secretary David Cameron.

Khan also recounted pressure from American officials during the same period.

He said he was warned in April 2024 by a US official that issuing the warrants would have "disastrous consequences," and that on May 1, 2024, Senator Lindsey Graham told him that applying the warrants would mean the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas "may as well shoot" the Israeli captives, who remained in the Gaza Strip.

According to the submission, Khan rejected calls to delay, saying there had been no indication that the Israeli regime intended to cooperate with the ICC or alter its behavior in Gaza, which Tel Aviv began subjecting to a war of genocide in October 2023.

Khan further detailed the timeline surrounding "sexual misconduct" allegations raised against him earlier that year.

He said he first became aware of the allegations on May 2, 2024, and that on May 6, he learned that a complaint had been filed with the ICC`s internal oversight mechanism.

The prosecutor said the sequence of events demonstrated that the plan to issue the arrest warrants predated any allegations against him.

He, meanwhile, insisted that his preparation was "meticulous" and driven by neutral legal assessment.

Khan`s filing also noted that he personally insisted on sending a forceful 22-page response to Tel Aviv`s request to dismiss the warrants after reviewing what he considered to be an overly restrained draft.

He additionally noted that he assembled a panel of international law experts to evaluate whether the court had jurisdiction, which Tel Aviv has claimed it does not have, and to examine whether cases should be pursued against Netanyahu and Gallant.