ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan confirms willingness to cooperate with UK inquiry into David Cameron's alleged threat to defund court

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has confirmed he would cooperate with a UK parliamentary inquiry into an April 2024 phone call with then-Foreign Secretary David Cameron, in which Khan says Cameron threatened to defund the court if he pursued arrest warrants for Israeli officials.

Khan, the British chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, made the statement in an interview with Middle East Eye this week. He said that if the Foreign Affairs Select Committee held an inquiry and asked him to give evidence, "of course I would consider it and cooperate."

The phone call took place on 23 April 2024, weeks before Khan applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Cameron, a former prime minister who is now a peer in the House of Lords, was then-British Foreign Secretary.

Khan described the conversation as "difficult." He said Cameron told him "that I'd lost the plot, or I'd be thought to have lost the plot if we went forward [with the warrants] in the way that he had heard." Khan added that "consequences were, or likely consequences, were conveyed to me."

According to Khan, Cameron conveyed that the UK would "defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute." Khan said: "I was left in no doubt that, of course, the UK is one of the biggest funders of the court, and the United Kingdom, his [Conservative] party, the governing party at the time, as he put it, and also the United States, may think that I would lose the dressing room, in the political dressing room."

A source close to Cameron told Middle East Eye journalist Peter Oborne that the call was "robust" but that Cameron pointed out strong voices in the Conservative Party would push for defunding, not a threat. Khan acknowledged there "can be differences of recollection" and noted that "there was somebody else on the call in my office, there was somebody else on his side." Baroness Liz Sugg, Cameron's special assistant, was also listening to the call.

Khan said he felt "very sad" about the conversation. "I expected more" from a former prime minister, he said. "I thought he would know better."

The Foreign Office has repeatedly refused to comment on the matter. Middle East minister Hamish Falconer responded to a letter on 26 November 2025, saying "it is not the practice of this Government to comment on the actions of previous Governments on such matters."

Khan went on extended leave in May 2025 pending a United Nations investigation into allegations against him. In March, Middle East Eye reported that a panel of judges appointed by the Assembly of State Parties bureau concluded the UN investigation had not established any "misconduct or breach of duty" by Khan.