Khan became interested in humanitarian law from a young age, partly due to his volunteer work with the Ahmadiyya Community.
Soldecanarias.net / Bruselas
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who has requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders, once defended controversial figures accused of crimes similar to those he now prosecutes.
“I see no difference between prosecuting a case and defending an accused person,” he said shortly after being elected to the nine-year term that began in 2021.
For the British prosecutor, the law is, after all, the law — and having experience on both sides “keeps one grounded” and helps him avoid corrosive ideas such as “thinking that the defense lawyer is the embodiment of the devil or that, as a prosecutor, one is doing ‘God’s work,’” he acknowledged in an interview with the specialized publication Opinio Juris.
Combative, charismatic, and, according to some, with a touch of arrogance, Karim Khan has drawn criticism from Israel and its allies including the United States and the United Kingdom for placing, for the first time, an Israeli leader in the same category as Omar al-Bashir, Vladimir Putin, or Joseph Kony: that of an accused war criminal.
His decision — on which a panel of ICC judges must now rule to determine whether the evidence supports the arrest warrants — has even earned him threats.
He recounted in an interview with CNN that while conducting investigations to build the case against Netanyahu, some “elected leaders” approached him and were very blunt in their remarks: “This court is made for Africa and for thugs like Putin,” Khan said one leader told him, though he did not reveal the person’s identity.
