LONDON: A former head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has expressed his disappointment at the alleged intimidation of an International Criminal Court prosecutor by the organization, something he said was “inconceivable.”
Earlier this week, British newspaper The Guardian published an investigation into what it claimed was a years-long campaign of intimidation by Mossad director Yossi Cohen against former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda between 2016 and 2021 in an attempt to sway war crimes investigations.
In 2021, Bensouda opened a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, which ended with her successor, Karim Khan, seeking an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the Guardian investigation, Cohen is alleged to have used “threats and manipulation” against Bensouda to force her to cooperate with Israel’s demands.
Cohen and Bensouda have declined to comment on the investigation.
Tamir Pardo, who served as director of the Mossad between 2011 and 2016, has told the newspaper that he did not believe any Mossad employee “would do things of the type described,” adding that it was reminiscent of “Cosa Nostra-style blackmail.”
Reporters in Israel working for Haaretz and TheMarker had also tried to report on the alleged intimidation in 2022, but were blocked from doing so by senior Israeli security officials, the Guardian reported.
“It doesn’t seem true. It’s inconceivable that something like this happened. It sounds to me like they’re talking about some other country and not about Israel,” Pardo said, adding that the actions alleged in the Guardian’s investigation were “not permissible” and “forbidden” in the Mossad he served.
“There are things that spy agencies do not do, things that they won’t do, and that are forbidden for them to do, and this is one of them.
“I don’t want to think that anyone who works for the organization in which I served for 36 years, let alone a person who headed it, was involved in the event that was described in the media,” he added.
Pardo said he might be “better off” living in denial if the findings are proven to be true.
“Maybe I’m better off that way, otherwise it’s just a horrible disappointment that something like this could happen in my country. I’ve seen some strange things in my life, but I refuse to believe that the organization I served and whose values I believed in could do something like this,” he said.
“I don’t think that Israel or its emissaries should be using blackmail and threats against a prosecutor in the court in The Hague, which the Jewish people were key to establishing after the Holocaust in the Second World War. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
