Bensouda, who served as the ICC’s chief prosecutor from 2012 to 2021, said unidentified men came to her home in The Hague after she opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine in 2015.
“They came directly to my house,” Bensouda told Al Jazeera in an interview published on Sunday. “I got the message that they’re sending.”
She said the men handed her an envelope containing $500 and indicated it was from someone she had helped. Bensouda said she later concluded the gesture was intended to show that those behind it knew where she lived.
Bensouda said she reported the incident to ICC security and Dutch authorities. According to her account, investigators traced telephone numbers associated with the visitors to Israel, though she said no further action appeared to have been taken.
“I felt left alone. I felt unsupported,” she said.
The former prosecutor also described meetings with then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, including one in a New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, which she said focused on the ICC’s Palestine investigation.
“What was clear was that they did not want the investigations into the situation in Palestine to go on,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Asked whether Cohen had told her Israel could “take care” of her and warned that proceeding could compromise her family’s security, as previously reported by the Guardian, Bensouda replied: “He did. He did.”
She described the meetings as starting friendly, with what she called “an attempt to win me over”, before hardening into explicit demands that she stop.
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