Foremost British lawyer, Karim Khan, has been sworn in as the new Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
At a ceremony on Wednesday, Khan pledged to reach out to nations that are not members of the court and to try to hold trials in countries where crimes are committed.
Khan, 51, a former defence lawyer for the Hague-based tribunal, was elected by ICC member states in February to serve a nine-year tenure at the world’s only permanent war crimes court.
He has been left a bulging case file by his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, who extended the ICC’s reach so dramatically that she was hit by US sanctions but also suffered a series of high-profile failures.
Khan took a public oath of office in a ceremony at the ICC, making him just the court’s third Prosecutor since it was founded in 2002 to try people for the world’s worst crimes.
Khan previously led a special UN probe into crimes by the Islamic State extremist group and, more controversially, also represented late Libyan leader Moamer Ghadaffi’s’s son, Seif al-Islam, at the ICC.
Bensouda has left him with a full in-tray, including a probe into the Philippines war on drugs that she announced on Monday, an investigation into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
In her farewell statement, Bensouda said that she had “made my decisions, with careful deliberation — but without fear or favour. Even in the face of adversity. Even at considerable personal cost.”
She had also aimed to open probes into Ukraine and Nigeria but was leaving those to Khan to complete.
The British lawyer will meanwhile have to contend with the outright opposition of key countries that have refused to join the ICC, including the United States, Israel, China and Russia.
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