Published by: MRT
June 16, 2021
June 16, 2021
British lawyer Karim Khan, 50, takes office on Wednesday as the new chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The witness is handed over to him by the Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, who has served her nine-year term and has been the flag of the fight against sexual and gender-based crimes. A Khan awaits, among others, the investigation of alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan, and the same task in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Both cases have the rejection of the United States and Israel and he must be used to avoid political pressure. You will also need to seek the support of the international community so that the requests for help from the victims are not lost due to the lack of visibility and budget of the court itself.
In his farewell, Bensouda, 60, said that he had done his best to rely “only on the law, without fear or favors.” Karim Khan was elected last February in New York, in the second round, with the votes of 72 of the 123 ICC member states. He came from leading the group commissioned by the United Nations to investigate the crimes perpetrated by the Islamic State (ISIS) against the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. A work that concluded this May with the presentation of a report to the Security Council, where he assured that “there is convincing evidence that genocide was committed against the Yazidis, with horrific crimes that break the soul.” Now he faces the challenge of inspiring trust and credibility in the Office of the Prosecutor, where an independent group of experts has found an environment of harassment and intimidation. Khan knows the ICC in depth because in his courtrooms he defended former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba, and Kenyan Vice President William Ruto, and has represented Saif el Islam, son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Bensouda leaves on the table of the new prosecutor two matters related to persecuted Muslim minorities that he will have to evaluate. These are, on the one hand, complaints of crimes against the Rohingya, deported to Bangladesh from Myanmar, a country that is not part of the court. Bangladesh is, and that is why the judges authorized in 2018 the first phase of what can become a case during their tenure. The luck of the Uyghurs in China is the other expedient. China is also not a member of the ICC, and although the prosecution does not have the powers to investigate the repression suffered by this group on Chinese soil, the outgoing prosecutor indicated in 2020 that it would keep the file open pending receipt of more data.
Shortly before his departure, Bensouda asked the judges to open an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed in the Philippines during the “war on drugs” by President Rodrigo Duterte. The president withdrew his country from the court in March 2019, but the departure does not affect the approach to events that can add up to thousands of deaths that have occurred as of 2016.
The ICC is not part of the UN, although its founding text, the Rome Statute, was negotiated in 1998 within the organization. The court has operated for two decades as the only permanent instance to prosecute the main perpetrators of the worst atrocities: genocide and war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Khan will deal with the two existential crises of the body. It is about the absence of countries such as the United States, China, Russia, India and Israel among its members, and the criticism from Africa. That’s where his defendants come from to date. It is up to the lawyer to open up to other regions and technological development plays in his favor, which can facilitate his work and thus improve the image of the body.
Some cases have not proceeded due to lack of support from the countries where it is investigated, but “digital information lacks borders, and can be consulted without having physical access to a territory,” says Raquel Vázquez Llorente, permanent representative before the ICC of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). On the phone, he explains that this is “a crucial advance for investigators, and technology will play a key role in future trials of war crimes and crimes against humanity.” According to her, they will never replace witness statements and the system must adapt, “but in an international court like this, without a police force, digital evidence can help.” The prosecution already has an external Technology Advisory Board to keep up to date. The expert would encourage the prosecutor “to inform the survivors from the early stages, since misinformation and erroneous or false information are easier to spread through the Internet.”
Khan is the third chief prosecutor of the court (the first was the Argentine Luis Moreno Ocampo) and he must also seek resources to improve the visibility of the court. Vázquez Llorente assures that the knowledge accumulated by the Prosecutor’s Office is incalculable and Khan’s inauguration seems to him “a good opportunity for the international community to recognize the progress made in the prosecution of these crimes.”
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