NEW YORK – British human rights lawyer Karim Khan was yesterday elected as the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a politically daunting position whose incumbent was slapped with United States sanctions.
Khan, 50, previously led a special United Nations probe into crimes by the Islamic State, in which he pressed for a trial on the lines of Nuremberg for Nazi war criminals.
More controversially, he represented late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam.
Khan will be only the third prosecutor of ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda, who has outraged Washington through her investigations into the Afghan war and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ICC nations failed to reach a consensus, triggering a vote here among four candidates, in which Khan won on the second ballot with 72 votes.
In the first round, he did not win a majority, but narrowly edged out Ireland’s Fergal Gaynor, who has represented victims before ICC in the Afghan war investigation, and in a case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The UN has 193 member states, but only 123 are in ICC, with the US, Israel, China and Russia notably absent.
Khan will take on a bulging file of difficult cases at a tribunal whose legitimacy is constantly under attack.
“There are many places where ICC could take action,” a UN envoy said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
“We don’t need less ICC, but more ICC.”
The new prosecutor’s first tasks include deciding the next steps in the probe into war crimes in Afghanistan, and the hugely contentious investigation into the 2014 Israel-Palestine conflict in Gaza.
The administration of then US president Donald Trump hit Bensouda and another senior ICC official last year with sanctions, including a travel ban and asset freeze, after she launched the probe that includes alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Israel and the US have also strongly opposed the probe into alleged war crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.
ICC judges, however, last week ruled that the court has jurisdiction over the situation in the Palestinian territories, paving the way for a full investigation after a five-year preliminary probe opened by Bensouda.
ICC is the world’s only permanent war crimes court, after years when the only route to justice for atrocities in countries like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia was separate tribunals.
Hamstrung from the start by the refusal of the US, Russia and China to join, the court has since faced criticism for having mainly taken on cases from poorer African nations. – AFP, February 13, 2021
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