Fresh questions have emerged over the British government’s response to reports that the previous Conservative government threatened to defund the International Criminal Court if it pursued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has released apparently misleading information about a phone call in which then foreign secretary, David Cameron, allegedly made the threat to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Details of the 23 April 2024 phone call between Cameron and Khan were first reported by MEE in June last year, but the foreign office has repeatedly refused to comment on the matter, despite growing political pressure.
Last week MEE reported that the Foreign Office had been forced for the first time to confirm that a phone conversation between Cameron and Khan took place in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by Unredacted, a research unit based at the University of Westminster.
Unredacted asked which ministers or officials were present on the call to Khan. In response, the Foreign Office said: “The then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, was the only person present on the call on 23 April 2024 with Karim Khan.”
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But according to numerous sources with knowledge of the matter, including former staff in the prosecutor’s office, Cameron’s special assistant, Baroness Liz Sugg, was also present on the call.
‘The British people have a right to know the truth’
– Kim Johnson, Labour MP
When MEE put this to the foreign office, it declined to comment and pointed MEE to Cameron, who sits as a Conservative peer in the House of Lords.
Neither Cameron nor Sugg, also a member of the House of Lords, responded to requests for comment.
Cameron served as foreign minister under then prime minister Rishi Sunak in the previous Conservative administration, which was replaced by the current Labour government following Keir Starmer’s general election victory in July 2024.
But the failure of the current government to comment on the allegations has prompted calls, including from some Labour MPs, for an investigation.
‘The UK must come clean’
Humza Yousaf, who was the first minister of Scotland when Cameron made the call to Khan, told MEE: “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.”
Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe
He added: “To, allegedly, threaten prosecutors at the most senior court in the world would be unacceptable. To do so in defence of a man who has led the genocide in Gaza, is simply unforgivable. Lord Cameron should make an urgent statement to the Lords clearing up this matter once and for all.”
MEE can further reveal that the government refused to comment on the matter in response to a letter sent in July 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.”
On Wednesday Labour MP Kim Johnson told MEE: “The public deserves honesty, not a culture of secrecy at the heart of government. If reports are accurate that senior Tories threatened to defund the ICC – and that the Foreign Office has since given false information about who was present on that call – then this is an issue of the utmost seriousness.”
Johnson added: “Ministers cannot stand at the despatch box or on the international stage claiming to uphold international law while refusing to answer basic questions about whether the UK sought to undermine the ICC.
“The foreign secretary must urgently address these reports, and we need a full and transparent investigation into what transpired. The British people have a right to know the truth.”
Cameron warned UK would defund ICC
Sam Raphael, professor in International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Westminster and a member of the Unredacted research unit, said that “full transparency from the Foreign Office is an absolute must.
“That means releasing a full and final list of who was on the call in question, as well as a transcript of the conversation and any accompanying material.”
Cameron, a former prime minister who was appointed foreign secretary by Sunak in November 2023, phoned Khan in April 2024 while the prosecutor was on an official visit to Venezuela.
During the call, according to sources with knowledge of the matter, Cameron told Khan that if the ICC issued warrants for Israeli leaders, the UK would “defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute”.
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”.
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.
In a submission to the ICC last month, Khan – who is on a leave of absence pending the outcome of a UN investigation into misconduct allegations against him – alleged that a senior British official had threatened that the UK would defund and withdraw from the court if he pursued warrants for Israeli leaders.
Khan submitted applications for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as for Hamas leaders, the following month. The warrants were approved and issued by the court in November 2024.
Possible criminal offence
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.
Now cross-party pressure is mounting on the Labour government to investigate Cameron’s call to the ICC prosecutor.
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.
On Wednesday, Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader and Your Party MP, told MEE: “Threatening to defund the ICC would amount to direct state interference in judicial independence, a flagrant breach of Britain’s obligations under the Rome Statute. There needs to be a full investigation – and ministers need to be held to account.
“That investigation should not just include Conservative ministers, but Labour ones too, who have failed to shield the ICC from ongoing interference or condemn the outrageous sanctions against it by the United States.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
