In July 1998, the Rome Statute created the legal basis for the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body designed to “guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice.” The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) was also created to initiate investigations and seek arrest warrants for anyone charged with crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction. Article 70 of the Statute empowers the Court to prosecute individuals for bribery, intimidation, or corrupt influence, but no one seems to have entertained the possibility that the prosecutor himself might be guilty of one or more of these offences. This oversight looks spectacularly naive in retrospect.

On 28 April, the Wall Street Journal reported allegations that the Qatari government had said it would “look after” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan if he indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Khan sought arrest warrants for both men on 20 May 2024 and denies receiving any such assurances from Qatar or any other state prior to doing so. Arrest warrants were also sought for Hamas leaders, but not for the Iranian and Qatari officials who financed and armed the group for years. In November 2025, the Guardian reported that Qatar had allegedly hired a private intelligence firm in Britain to discredit a Malaysian ICC staffer who has accused Khan of sexual assault. If substantiated, this conduct could raise questions about the applicability of Article 70. Notably, Khan’s decision to pursue Israeli leaders for war crimes was taken shortly after the emergence of the assault allegations, which he also categorically denies.

Allegations like these highlight the threat that financial incentives and judicial activism can pose to the pursuit of international justice. The notion that international courts are impervious to foreign influence is a delusion that The Hague has nurtured for decades, and it helps to explain why the system has failed to deter the commission of atrocities. This is a problem of institutional design. These courts were forged in debates about competing state interests and their independence from the UN Security Council, which baked power politics and reputational management into their architecture from the outset. A decade ago, these courts were widely depicted as neo-colonial instruments, advancing Western political interests against African states under the guise of human rights. Today, they have overcorrected into postcolonial theory, and like virtually every other liberal institution in the modern West, they have been captured by self-destructive ideologies and hostile foreign interests.