“The law is not there to look pretty. We cannot ignore it.” Last December, this statement by the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, on a visit to Palestine already set the tone…
This British jurist, known to be inflexible, is at the center of attention in the Middle East, after having demanded, on Monday May 20, arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his Minister of Defense and three Hamas leaders. The motives are serious: crimes such as “deliberately starving civilians”, “intentional homicide” and “extermination and/or murder” in connection with the Israeli operation in Gaza…
A decision which put the spotlight on this human rights specialist who notably worked on the crimes committed by the Islamic State in Iraq.
30 years of experience in international criminal law and human rights
Aged 54, Karim Khan is a graduate of King’s College London. A lawyer since 1992, he has more than 30 years of professional experience in the field of international criminal law and the defense of human rights.
“His extensive experience includes serving as a prosecutor, victims’ advocate and defense attorney before national and international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for “former Yugoslavia, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and the Special Court for Sierra Leone”, specifies the ICC on its website.
A recognized lawyer, Karim Khan “ensures to have a very in-depth knowledge not only of the factual elements of a case, but also of all the other aspects which, in this field, involve political, cultural and societal considerations”, noted in 2021 the specialized legal review Legal500.
Directorate of the UN special investigation into IS crimes in Iraq
Well versed in international issues, Karim Khan was elected in February 2021 and officially invested in June of the same year, winning 72 votes out of 122 against three other candidates in the second round of voting.
Human rights specialist, Karim Khan was before his election under-secretary general of the UN (United Nations organization), responsible for leading the special investigation into the crimes of the jihadist group Islamic State committed in Iraq between 2018 and 2021. The world must “demystify” the ideology of IS, he declared to AFP in July 2019, believing that “Iraq and Humanity need their Nuremberg”, in reference to the trials which judged the former leaders of the Nazi Party in Germany following the Second World War.
Prosecution and defense before different international courts
The lawyer began his work in international courts from 1997. He was first a legal advisor in the Office of the Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR). ).
He has worked equally well for the prosecution, the defense and the victims in numerous international trials. For example, he intervened on the side of the civil parties in the trial of the torturer of the Khmer Rouge regime “Duch” in Cambodia, or as an advisor to victims in cases in Albania, Kenya, Sierra Leone… He had also already officiated before the ICC, this time on the defense side, for the son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam, for Jean-Pierre Bemba, former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, acquitted of criminal charges of war and crimes against humanity in 2018, or for rebel leaders in Darfur.
“The fact that he has defended both high-profile defendants and victims, that he has represented the prosecution, offers him a unique position to meet the challenges that await him,” analyzed for AFP in 2021 Carsten Stahn, professor of international criminal law at the Dutch University of Leiden, who interviewed Karim Khan in 2015 in front of university students.
In a report evaluating the finalists at the time of the November 2020 prosecutor election, the International Criminal Court commission found Karim Khan to be “a charismatic and eloquent communicator”, with experience managing a large team. and demonstrating a good grasp of “the global context in which the ICC operates, as well as a clear vision of the changes needed within the Office of the Prosecutor.”
In his more recent feats of arms, Karim Khan notably issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, the Russian president in March 2023, “concerning illegal deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied areas in Ukraine to the Russian Federation”. In February 2024, he also announced that he wanted to be able to prosecute environmental crimes, which are often the cause or consequence of war crimes or crimes against humanity.