The Red Cross just named ex-UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl as its new head, even though he was forced to quit UNRWA in 2019 in wake of a damning internal ethics report that implicated him in an alleged sexual affair with a staffer during world trips, abuse of power and corruption, causing Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and New Zealand to freeze funding at the time.
UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said the appointment was inappropriate, and called on the ICRC to cancel it.
2/ @swissinfo: “The ethics report says many in & outside UNRWA knew of the affair between the married Krähenbühl and his chief advisor. He was often at her workplace rather than his. They travelled business class together, while others travelled economy.” https://t.co/9m9VTbxzf8
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
4/ Krähenbühl promoted a false narrative that he was pushed out by a Trump-Israel-Jewish cabal.
But his spin was refuted by the most pro-Palestinian UNRWA officials, academic and journalists.
In 2021, Geneva's Le Temps confirmed many of the most serious charges against Mr.…
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
6/ On 6 November 2019, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl unexpectedly resigned his position within hours of being placed on administrative leave by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Guterres had acted pursuant to the findings of an investigation into…
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
8/ In the leadup to Al Jazeera’s above-mentioned award-winning reporting on this matter, Mr. Krähenbühl had during the summer of 2019 removed a number of those implicated in the Ethics Office report from their positions, including his Deputy, Sandra Mitchell, and his Chief of…
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
10/ MR: Yet both of you were interviewed by the makers of the RTS Temps Présent documentary, and also communicated with Orient XXI. How did they respond?
RB & LT: When we were approached by RTS at the beginning of 2020, the principal filmmaker, Anne-Frédérique Widmann, informed…
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
12/ (RB & LT, cont'd): The articles refer to Mr. Krähenbühl’s extensive travels in search of funding, “practically leaving the organizations to its own devices”, or, rather, to his American Deputy, Sandra Mitchell, and Chief of Staff, Hakam Shahwan, a Palestinian whom the…
- Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 22, 2023
