Tuesday, February 4News That Matters

ICC’s Khan: Forensic investigator now going through misconduct probe

 

 Prosecutor of the Worldwide Legal Courtroom (ICC) Karim Asad Ahmad Khan holds a press convention on the Ministry of Justice within the Sudanese capital Khartoum on August 12, 2021. [AFP]

Karim Khan’s job as chief prosecutor of the Worldwide Legal Courtroom requires a scrupulous and meticulous examination of proof to deliver instances in opposition to alleged perpetrators of the world’s worst crimes.

Now the 54-year-British lawyer faces his personal probe, into allegations of misconduct reportedly in opposition to a member of his personal workplace, which he firmly denies.

When Khan was sworn in as chief prosecutor of the Worldwide Legal Courtroom, he stated the court docket must be judged by its acts — “the proof of the pudding must be within the consuming.”

And by in search of arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, Khan has proven he isn’t afraid to tackle the world’s most controversial instances.

The appliance adopted an arrest warrant issued final yr for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which promptly slapped arrest warrants on Khan himself.

However Khan has confronted down controversy all through a profession that has included stints defending Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor in opposition to allegations of conflict crimes in Sierra Leone.

Different high-profile shoppers have included Kenya’s President William Ruto in a crimes-against-humanity case on the ICC that was finally dropped, and the son of late Libyan chief Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam.

Requested about “crossing the ground” — working as each prosecutor and defence — Khan informed specialist publication OpinioJuris that it helps legal professionals keep “grounded.”

It additionally prevents “corrosive traits corresponding to considering that defence counsel is the satan incarnate or that as a prosecutor you’re doing ‘God’s work’,” he stated.

Criticised initially for not performing quick sufficient to forestall atrocities in Gaza, Khan touched off a firestorm when making use of for arrest warrants over the conflict.

Netanyahu known as it a “ethical outrage of historic proportions.” For US President Joe Biden, it was “outrageous.”

Even earlier than Khan’s utility, senior US Republicans penned a letter threatening to bar him and his household from the US, ending ominously “you will have been warned.”

However Khan informed CNN: “This isn’t a witch hunt. This isn’t some sort of emotional response to noise… It is a forensic course of that’s anticipated of us as worldwide prosecutors.”

‘Responsible as charged’

Born in Scotland, Khan was educated on the non-public Silcoates Faculty in northern England, earlier than finding out undergraduate legislation at King’s School, London.

His father was Pakistani, his mom British and he’s a member of the minority Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, generally sprinkling his speeches with “inshallah” (God Prepared).

Known as to the bar in 1992, he went on to chop his tooth in worldwide legislation on the former Yugoslav and Rwandan conflict crimes courts from 1997 to 2000.

He later represented survivors and family members of victims of the Nineteen Seventies Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia at its UN-backed court docket within the late 2000s.

His different roles have included a stint at The Hague-based Particular Tribunal for Lebanon, set as much as deliver to justice the killers of Lebanese ex-PM Rafic Hariri in 2005.

Extra lately, he headed the UN particular probe into Islamic State group crimes and known as for trials like these at Nuremberg of Nazi leaders.

Initially absent from a listing of candidates for the highest ICC prosecutor job, Khan was added reportedly on the insistence of the Kenyan authorities.

The ICC choice panel described him as a “charismatic and articulate communicator who’s effectively conscious of his achievements.”

“I did apply as a result of I believed I may do the function. If the Search Committee thought this was vanity, then I am responsible as charged,” Khan stated.

In his speeches, he’s forthright with a robust command of oratory, sprinkled with dashes of British humour.

“From what I’ve noticed, Karim Khan looks as if a no-nonsense lawyer, which I fairly respect,” Melanie O’Brien, visiting professor in worldwide legislation on the College of Minnesota, informed AFP.

An ICC prosecutor “has to have a sure fortitude as a result of you understand that you will be up in opposition to individuals who do not agree with you and do not agree with the court docket usually,” she added.


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