Is The KC for real, or is he grandstanding?
Albert Goodwin, LawFuel correspondent
Karim A A Khan KC has appeared to have turned the tables on both the countries that proposed his membership to the Interntionational Criminal Court – the UK and Israel – with the showcase announcement for the issuing of arrest warrants for Benyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and Yoav Gallant, its defense minister, as wanted for crimes against humanity, alongside senior leaders of Hamas to provide the appropriate political ‘balance’.
The moves were made over a week ago in a statement from the International Criminal Court and with a flurry of global media attention.
They were also followed by various claims swerving from complimentary and appreciative to damning and condemnatory.
The moves have been described as “deeply unhelpful” by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Israel, which has not unexpectedly denounced the decision, could stop the investigation and prosecution by the ICC. Under its founding principle of complementarity, a case is “inadmissible” if it is being “investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution” (Rome Statute art. 17(1)(a)).
As it has a highly sophisticated legal system, Israel can investigate the charges. Palestine, on the other hand is in no position to investigate and prosecute war crimes by Hamas committed in Israel and Gaza, even if it wanted to.
There may be a significant degree of grandstanding by Khan who went public with his a public showcase pronouncement about the decision on cable television in an interview with Christiane Amanpour and social media pronouncements about the arrests.
His office indicated the unusual course of taking the publicity steps was because of Khan’s “significant concern regarding the ongoing nature of many of the alleged crimes cited in the applications.”
Which is no different from most other atrocities and the like cited in ICC matters.
Sex Offenses
The decision has propelled Khan into the public spotlight, a position he has occupied previously with various human rights issues and also when his brother, former Tory MP Imran Ahmad Khan (pictured) became a convicted child sex offender in 2022 and has now been released from prison. He represented Wakefield for the Conservatives from 2019 to 2022, stepping down after his conviction.
The decision has deep political implications even though its legal enforcability is doubtful, but casts the human rights KC,
Although securing high profile support from such luminaries as Amal Clooney, who is a Lebanese-born left wing activist ostensibly giving her blessing to the decision on behalf of her “Clooney Foundation”, the decision has the hallmarks of a strongly political stunt rather than serious legal challenge.
The fact that the ICC have done nothing about the man who is responsible for more Muslim deaths than anyone in Israel or Gaza – Syrian president Bashar al-Assad – puts the lie to the political inclinations behind the decision, which also appears to equate the barbarity of the Hamas attack upon Israel on October 7 with the Israeli response in defending itself against an enemy that uses civilians as the front line of defense.
Khan must request the arrest warrants from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take two months on average to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward.
Scottish-born Khan worked as a crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, before becoming a senior prosecutor.
The grandson of a Yorkshire miner, he studied law at King’s College London, had spent years cutting his teeth as a defence lawyer focussing upon human rights issues with clients that included included Saif Qaddafi, the son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, and William Ruto, now president of Kenya.
He worked on behalf of the UN’s war crimes unit for the victims of ISIS atrocities and sent investigators into the Ukraine.
He was elected to be the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor in June 2021, serving a nine-year term and supported in the election by theUK, the US, Kenya and – ironically – Israel.
But with his latest case he has drawn a long bow, targeting a country that is democratic and defending itself against a brutal and inhumane attack, rather than against stateless terrorists in ISIS or brutal dictators like Putin.
The parallels dissipate with the current claims and whether the strong publicity associated with the claims, together with strongly leftwing supporters, will see the barrister achieve anything like the accomplishment of previous cases remains – at best – highly doubtful.
