British human rights lawyer Karim Khan was elected Friday as the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, a politically daunting position whose incumbent was slapped with US sanctions.
Khan, 50, previously led a special UN probe into crimes by the Islamic State extremist group in which he pressed for a trial on the lines of Nuremberg for Nazi war criminals.
More controversially, he also represented late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam.
Khan will be only the third prosecutor of the ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda, who has outraged Washington through her investigations into the Afghanistan war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ICC nations failed to reach a consensus choice, triggering a vote in New York 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 the ICC in the Afghan war investigation and in a case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The United Nations has 193 member states but only 123 are in the ICC, with the United States, 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 the ICC could take action,” one UN envoy said Friday on condition of anonymity, adding he hoped the voting would not stretch over several days.
“We don’t need less ICC but more ICC,” he said.
Hard early choices
The new prosecutor’s first tasks will include deciding the next steps on the probe into war crimes in Afghanistan and the hugely contentious investigation into the 2014 Israel-Palestinian 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 United States have also strongly opposed the probe into alleged war crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.
ICC judges however ruled last week that the court had jurisdiction over the situation in the Palestinian territories, paving the way for a full investigation after a five-year preliminary probe opened by Bensouda.
The new US administration of President Joe Biden has signaled a less confrontational line but has not said whether it will drop sanctions against Bensouda, who has attacked the “unacceptable” measures.
Other candidates for the job included Spanish judge Carlos Castresana, who previously headed a UN panel combating crime and corruption in Guatemala but resigned in 2010 alleging “systemic attacks” by power-hungry officials, and Francesco Lo Voi, an Italian prosecutor of the Mafia.
Mixed record
Bensouda has had a mixed record in her tenure since 2012 even as she expanded — some analysts say overextended — the court’s reach.
Under her leadership, former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was cleared of crimes against humanity, while former DR Congo vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba was acquitted on appeal.
Kenya’s Kenyatta also saw charges of crimes against humanity over electoral bloodshed dropped by Bensouda.
But Bensouda has recently secured high-profile convictions against Ugandan child soldier-turned-Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen and Congolese warlord Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda.
She has also been credited with improving the prosecutor’s office compared with her predecessor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose leadership was described as “autocratic” in a probe ordered by the ICC into the Kenyatta case.
The 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 United States, Russia and China to join, the court has since faced criticism for having mainly taken on cases from poorer African nations.
(AFP)
British barrister Karim Khan elected ICC’s new chief prosecutor
February 13, 2021
Khan, 50, won on second round of voting by 131 member states and replaces Fatou Bensouda, who was hit with US sanctions
A British QC has been elected as the new chief prosecutor for the international criminal court in an election by the court’s 131 member states at the UN in New York. Karim Khan will replace Fatou Bensouda from the Gambia, and as he starts his nine-year term he faces a daunting task trying to secure more convictions and spread acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction across the globe.
The secret ballot for the post was the first in the court’s history – and took place amid some controversy and high politics between member states.
Khan, 50, beat candidates from Ireland, Spain and Italy to win on a second round of voting with support from 72 nations – 10 more than the 62 needed.
Khan was called to the English bar in 1992, and has promised to reform the prosector’s office to make it more efficient. He is regarded as a tough, fiercely clever advocate, and was appointed in 2018 by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to lead the UN team investigating international crimes committed by Isis.
The first task of the third prosecutor in the ICC’s short history will be to try to secure more convictions and so increase the court’s legitimacy among the many member states that refuse to recognise its jurisdiction – including the US, Russia and China. The court has also faced skepticism in Africa as leaders from that continent have increasingly become the sole focus of the Hague-based court.
Karim had not originally been on the shortlist for the post and was added partly at the insistence of the Kenyan government. Karim had controversially acted as defence counsel for the Kenyan vice-president, William Ruto, when he was charged with crimes against humanity following post-election violence in 2007 that led to 1,200 people being killed.
The charges were dropped in 2016 by the ICC after what was described as “troubling incidence of witness interference and intolerable political meddling”. One key witness was killed in December 2014. Khan recently wrote an open letter detailing how he did all possible to prevent intimidation by ensuring the individual was put under witness protection, and then seeking an inquiry.
By the start of this week it looked as if Khan would be chosen by consensus, the ICC’s preferred method of appointment, when last-minute objections came in from Spain and Mauritius.
The objections came from Mauritius focused less on Karim as an individual, but that he was nominated by the British government. Mauritius had been infuriated that UK ministers had for a second time said they had no need to abide by rulings of international UN courts in the dispute over its sovereignty of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Karim will have to decide the next steps on the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, and the contentious investigation into the 2014 Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza. The European parliament this week called for a worldwide ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, also called for an ICC war crimes investigation into the civil war in Yemen.
The administration of the then US president Donald Trump hit Bensouda and another senior ICC official last year with sanctions including a travel ban and an asset freeze over the inquiry, which includes alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Israel – which is also not an ICC member – has strongly opposed the inquiry into alleged war crimes by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.
ICC judges, however, ruled last week that the court had jurisdiction over Palestine, paving the way for a full investigation after a five-year preliminary inquiry opened by Bensouda.
Bensouda has recently secured high-profile convictions against Ugandan child soldier turned Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen, and Congolese warlord Bosco “Terminator” Nagana.
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