Britain’s Karim Khan Succeeds Bensouda As ICC Prosecutor

Britain’s Karim Khan was sworn on Wednesday as the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), facing huge challenges, including investigations into the Palestinian territories, Afghanistan and the Philippines.

Fifty-one-year-old Khan, a former defence lawyer for the Hague-based tribunal, was elected by ICC member states in February to serve a nine-year tenure at the world’s only permanent war crimes court.

He has been left with a bulging case file by his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, who extended the ICC’s reach so dramatically that she was hit by US sanctions but also suffered a series of high-profile failures.

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“The ICC is in a crucial phase, it has faced criticism for not being as effective as states have wished,” Carsten Stahn, an international criminal law professor at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, told AFP.

But Stahn said Khan could bring “new momentum” and had a “window of opportunity to amend the functioning” of the court, which has also been criticised for the high salaries of its judges and its slow-moving processes.

Khan took a public oath of office in a ceremony at the ICC, making him just the court’s third prosecutor since it was founded in 2002 to try people for the world’s worst crimes.

“I solemnly undertake that I will perform my duties and exercise my powers as Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court honourably, faithfully, impartially, and conscientiously,” he said.

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