A British QC has been elected the new chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in an election by the 131 member states of the court at the UN in New York. Karim Khan will replace Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, and when he begins his nine-year term, he faces a formidable task of bringing about more convictions and spreading the acceptance of the rule of law throughout the world.
The secret ballot for the post was the first in the court’s history – and took place amid controversy and high politics between member states.
Khan, 50, beat candidates from Ireland, Spain and Italy to win a second round with the support of 72 countries – ten more than the 62 needed.
Khan was summoned to the English bar in 1992 and promised to reform the prosecutor’s office to make it more efficient. He is considered a tough, smart-minded lawyer, and was appointed in 2018 by 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 obtain more convictions, thus increasing the court’s legitimacy among the many member states that refuse to recognize its jurisdiction – including the US, Russia and China. The court has also faced skepticism in Africa as mainland leaders have increasingly become the only focus of the Hague court.
Karim was not originally shortlisted for the post and was added in part at the urging of the Kenyan government. Karim controversially acted as defense counsel for Kenyan Vice President William Ruto when he was charged with crimes against humanity following post-election violence that led to the killing of 1,200 people.
The charges were dropped by the ICC in 2016 after what was described as a “worrying occurrence of witness interference and intolerable political interference”. One key witness was killed in December 2014. Khan recently wrote an open letter outlining how he did everything possible to prevent intimidation by ensuring that the individual was placed under the protection of witnesses and then investigated.
At the beginning of this week, it looked as if Khan would be chosen by consensus, the ICC’s preferred method of appointment when objections came from Spain and Mauritius at the last minute.
The objections come from Mauritius and focus less on Karim as an individual, but that he is nominated by the British government. Mauritius was furious that British ministers had said for a second time that they did not have to obey the decisions of international UN courts in the dispute over its sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Karim will have to decide on the next steps on the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan and the controversial investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza in 2014. The European Parliament this week called for a global ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and also asked for an ICC war crime investigation into the Yemeni civil war.
The government of then-US President Donald Trump hit Bensouda and another senior ICC official with sanctions last year, including a travel ban and a freeze on assets over the investigation, which include alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Israel – which is also not a member of the ICC – strongly opposed the investigation into alleged war crimes by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.
However, ICC judges ruled last week that the court has jurisdiction over Palestine, paving the way for a full investigation into a five-year preliminary investigation that Bensouda has opened.
Bensouda recently secured sensational convictions against the Ugandan child soldier, who was commander of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dominic Ongwen, and the Congolese warlord Bosco ‘Terminator’ Ntaganda.