New ICC prosecutor Karim Khan promises to build ‘stronger cases’ | ICC News

British attorney Karim Khan took office as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, pledging to improve his track record by bringing only his strongest cases to justice.

Khan, who is only the third person in this role, faces many challenges at a time of heavy political pressure on the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal.

He succeeds Fatou Bensouda from Gambia, whose nine-year term ended on Tuesday.

The ICC is handling a number of sensitive cases, including in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Afghanistan, and prosecutors were personally affected by US sanctions during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Under Trump, Washington opposed the decisions of Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda to investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, including against US troops, and alleged atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories by Israeli troops, Palestinians and other armed groups.

The sanctions have been dropped, but US and Israel resistance to the court remains.

“Build stronger cases”

Khan, 51, took an oath during a ceremony in The Hague to serve his nine-year term with honor and impartiality. One of his main tasks is to improve the efficiency of the public prosecutor’s office.

ICC chief judge Piotr Hofmanski said during the swearing-in ceremony that being a prosecutor is a “hard job”, but praised Khan’s “outstanding credentials”.

Khan also promised to reach out to countries that are not members of the court and try to hold trials in countries where crimes are committed. The world powers USA, Russia and China are not members and do not recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

“The priority for me, and I believe that is the principle of the Rome Statute, is not to focus so much on where legal proceedings are taking place, but to ensure that the search for accountability and the penetration of impunity are undertaken” said Khan, referring to the contract that established the court in his first speech after taking the oath of office.

“The Hague itself should be a city of last resort,” he said. “Wherever possible, we should try to hold trials in the country or in the region.”

Since it opened in 2002, the ICC has convicted five men of war crimes and crimes against humanity, all of them African militia leaders from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Mali and Uganda. The sentences ranged from nine to 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors dropped or lost at least three important cases, or failed to gather enough evidence in others to go to justice.

“Opening preliminary investigations, getting a permit, or starting an investigation is a start, but as we say in English, the proof of the pudding is in the food. We have to go to court, ”said Khan.

“We can’t invest that much, we can’t create such high expectations and achieve so little, so often in the courtroom,” he said.

“We need better implementation of what is required … build stronger cases and get better cases in the courtroom.”

The ICC is already dealing with scarce resources and is dealing with 14 full-blown investigations and eight preliminary investigations. Khan also inherits investigations launched in countries like Myanmar, the Philippines and Ukraine.

Most recently, Khan headed a United Nations team investigating atrocities in Iraq and told the Security Council last month that he had found “clear and compelling evidence” that members of ISIS committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014 .

“Critical phase”

The ICC was established almost 20 years ago as the full-time successor to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals and several separate international tribunals in situations such as the former Yugoslavia.

But it has long been criticized on several fronts, starting with alleged prejudice, its initial focus on cases involving Africa, the high salary packages for judges, and the long time it takes to bring suspects to justice.

“The ICC is in a decisive phase, it has been criticized for not being as effective as the states would have liked,” Carsten Stahn, professor of international criminal law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, told the AFP news agency.

Bensouda has faced a number of setbacks: former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo was acquitted of crimes against humanity, while former Vice President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was acquitted on appeal, and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was indicted dropped against him.

But it recently achieved high profile convictions of Ugandan child soldier and Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen and Congolese strongman Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda.

In her parting statement, Bensouda said she “made my decisions with careful consideration – but without fear or favor. Even in the face of adversity. Even with considerable personal costs ”.