Speaking to POLITICO on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last year, just a few weeks before he successfully applied to ICC judges for an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Khan had emphasized his bullish ambition for the court to have real-time impact on ongoing conflicts. The 54-year-old British lawyer, who cut his teeth in the prosecutor’s office of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, explained he wanted to ensure “there’s more legality, there’s more accountability and less space, hopefully, for the belief that the power of the gun or the bullet or the bomb will trump everything else.”
A laudable and noble ambition, indeed.
But in a bid to make ICC-adjudicated international humanitarian law more relevant and timely, Khan’s arguably playing with fire — and perhaps overreaching. It’s a move that could leave the ICC badly scorched without doing anything to alleviate the suffering of Gazans, as Israel continues to prosecute what it sees as a righteous war, which has razed the coastal enclave, prompted a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and killed thousands of civilians.
For some, Khan’s swift pursuit of indictments and warrants, first for Putin and now for Israeli and Hamas leaders, is a bold display of legal rule that contrasts with the caution of his predecessors. It will put the ICC on the map, they say.
According to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the ICC prosecutor is “right to take these actions” against Putin, Netanyahu and Hamas’ leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar. “These arrest warrants may or may not be carried out, but it is imperative that the global community uphold international law,” he said.
There’s also been praise for Khan’s spirited judicial idealism as an ICC prosecutor who isn’t only targeting legal transgressions in Africa — a point Khan himself advertised in his interview, explaining that a senior Western official had warned him the ICC was “built for Africa and for thugs like Putin” — not for the West and its allies.
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