The British lawyer Karim Khan He is currently acting Attorney General International Criminal Court, embarking on a complex mission that includes the controversial investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She succeeds Fatou Bensunda of the Gambia, who has completed a nine-year tenure, during which she expanded the ICC’s work, but also suffered some defeats, such as the acquittal of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, the AP reported.
THE Karim Khan, 51, was elected attorney General of the ICC in February at New York from the countries that have signed the Rome Statute. He will be officially sworn in today at 11:00 (12:00 Greek time) in The Hague, where the seat of the only permanent war crimes tribunal is located, and he will become its third Attorney General. A lawyer specializing in human rights, Kahn was previously the UN Under-Secretary-General in charge of the organization’s special investigation into Islamic State crimes.
Kahn has been a defense attorney in many cases before the ICC, such as that against Saif al-Islam, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Many complicated and difficult cases await Khan, most notably the ICC’s request to investigate crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the “war on drugs” in the Philippines, the war crimes investigation in Afghanistan and the investigation on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Critical phase
The new attorney general will also have to face opposition from powerful countries that have refused to sign the Rome Statute, its founding treaty, such as the United States, China and Israel. “The ICC is at a critical juncture” after being widely criticized for not being “as effective as its member states would like it to be,” said Carsten Stan, a professor of criminal law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
Stan also said that the new attorney general could be a “cause for judicial reform”, which has been criticized for high salaries for its judges and delays in proceedings. The investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is highly “politically charged”, he said. Britain, a member of the ICC, for example, opposes it.
“The ICC can be considered a factor that is not completely impartial and member states also have different priorities as to what the ICC should do in this context. “It will be very difficult to reconcile the different expectations,” he explained. “She is under pressure and we hope she will act like Fatou Bensunda with independence, without fear and without discrimination,” said Matthew Canock, director of Amnesty International’s Center for International Justice.
“Very brave road”
Kahn, on the other hand, may benefit from a less controversial US government at a time when former President Donald Trump’s administration has imposed sanctions on Bensunda. The outgoing Attorney General leaves behind a mixed account, despite the fact that she managed to expand the work of the ICC.
During her tenure, former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and former Congolese President Jean-Pierre Beba were acquitted of war crimes charges. At the same time, the charges against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta were dropped.
But Bensunda also won important victories, such as the conviction of Dominic Ongwen, a child soldier from Uganda who became commander of the Lord Resistance Army (LRA), and the conviction of former Congolese warlord Bosco Daganda. “Eventually we will remember her as someone who started leading the ICC on a very bold path,” Kanok admitted.
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