British lawyer selected to be next chief prosecutor

After months of intense lobbying and shifting candidate lists, the member states of the International Criminal Court chose Karim Khan, a British lawyer, as the tribunal’s next chief prosecutor, a role that will shape the court’s image and effectiveness for years to come.

Khan, a veteran of the international legal scene who has worked on both the prosecution and defense sides, received 72 votes in a secret ballot Friday after the 123 countries had failed to reach consensus on any of four shortlist contenders. Elected to a nineyear term, he will succeed Fatou Bensouda of Gambia, whose appointment expires at the end of June.

The chief prosecutor holds the most important post at the court, which has been operating since 2002 in The Hague. The top body in international criminal justice, it has 18 judges to carry out its mandate of trying crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of genocide and aggression. But the prosecutor drives the institution by selecting the cases to pursue, effectively determining what events and which people are targeted by the court.

Khan’s election “comes at a moment when the court is needed more than ever and faces both internal performance shortcomings and external pressure about its role,” said Elizabeth Evenson of Human Rights Watch.

Khan, 50, currently leads a U.N. group investigating war crimes attributed to the Islamic State group. He is a familiar figure at The Hague, where he is known for his trial skills, and has served over the years for both the defense and the prosecution.

The appointment of a new prosecutor comes at a time when the court is facing a tighter budget as its effectiveness has been widely questioned.

Defenders of the court have often argued that it has struggled to live up to its mission because of a lack of resources and the failure of many member states to cooperate, most notably by not assisting investigations and not carrying out the court’s arrest warrants.

It has also earned the hostility of major powers, not least the Trump administration, which slapped sanctions on Bensouda and her team for choosing to investigate possible war crimes by American forces in Afghanistan. The Biden administration has said the sanctions will be “thoroughly reviewed."

The United States, China and Russia are not members of the ICC.