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Threat of US sanctions over Gaza forced me out, says ICC ... [1]
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Date: 2025-07
I’m sitting with British barrister Andrew Cayley in The Observer offices just a week after he left the International Criminal Court. He’s only been back in London a few days and it’s clear he’s still reeling from his experience. Cayley oversaw the investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel and Hamas for the ICC, a case that has presented a serious challenge for the world’s only permanent war crimes court. It has come at a personal cost to Cayley, now 61. “It was the worst few months of my life,” he tells me. Back in early 2024, when the call came offering a job from the ICC, he knew it would be tough, but the chance to lead the Palestine investigation, with American lawyer Brenda Hollis, was enticing. From the outset it was obvious the legal case would not be easy. Israel is not a signatory to the court and doesn’t accept its jurisdiction, while its politicians have been openly hostile towards the ICC. But Palestine is a member and so the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed by its citizens and on its territory.
‘They said we need to put alarms on all the French windows, and you need a reinforced bulletproof door’
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The work was emotionally gruelling and involved gathering evidence and testimonies from Israeli hostage survivors who had spent months in underground tunnels, watching videos of young Israeli girls being shot dead at point-blank range and interviews with horrifically maimed children from Gaza. “The pressures were immense,” says Cayley. Some of those pressures were internal: “Speed; things had to be done very quickly”, but most were external. As it became apparent that the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, intended to proceed with his request for an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, that pressure ratcheted up. In May 2024, a bipartisan group of US senators had arranged a virtual meeting with senior members of the ICC to discuss the Palestine case. Politicians in the US had already been threatening to retaliate against the court if it proceeded with the arrest warrants against Israel. Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Israel, “was screaming at us,” recalls Cayley. Other ICC employees who were in that meeting have confirmed to me that Graham was threatening that they would face sanctions and that the court would be shut down. “Yeah, it was bad,” says Cayley. What was going through his head? “I thought, well, we’ve got to do what’s right, but the US exercises this absolutely immense power. It was frightening, to be honest. We were being forewarned.” But it was only after Khan took to CNN later that month to announce that he had requested the arrest warrants for the Israeli leaders and Hamas commanders, that Cayley realised the precarious position he was in personally. He began receiving anonymous, threatening phone calls saying “you’re in a very dangerous position”. And last summer, the Dutch police and security services turned up at the court to warn that he was in considerable danger. “They said we need to look at your flat and we need to put alarms on all the French windows, bars across the skylights and you need a reinforced bulletproof door,” he recalls. “It was very frightening.”
Andrew Cayley waits for the start of a court session in the Hague’s Kosovo Specialist Chambers court in 2020
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[1] Url:
https://observer.co.uk/news/international/article/threat-of-us-sanctions-over-gaza-forced-me-out-says-icc-lawyer
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