KARIM KHAN said he would bring “determination” and “stamina” to the job of chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The British barrister will need those qualities as he confronts the political firestorm that he caused by applying for arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as three leaders of Hamas. Mr Khan says he has “reasonable grounds” to believe they are responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes, including, in the Israelis’ case, using “starvation as a weapon of war”.

Mr Khan’s decision pitches the court into the controversies provoked by the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas massacred Israeli communities near Gaza on October 7th. The warrants will not be issued unless they are approved by ICC judges. The Israelis have condemned the application against their leaders, as have many Western politicians, including President Joe Biden. Republican senators have threatened to impose sanctions, including travel bans, on the chief prosecutor and his “associates”. But don’t expect him to wilt. Mr Khan has also taken on Vladimir Putin: the court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president for war crimes allegedly committed during the invasion of Ukraine. What drives him?

Mr Khan was born in Scotland to a British mother and Pakistani father. He is a Muslim, and sprinkles his statements with references to his faith. But Mr Khan is part of a minority group within Islam. He is an Ahmadi, one of more than 10m who say that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, an Indian who founded their tradition in 1889, was a prophet. For many Muslims, this is blasphemous. In 1974 Pakistan, where most Ahmadis lived, declared them to be non-Muslims. The country banned them from practising their faith in 1984, driving many abroad. Ahmadis have been persecuted ever since (including in Britain). Mr Khan says that his community’s experience helped him “to gravitate” towards human-rights law.

He studied at King’s College, London, before getting his first job, with Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service. In the late 1990s he worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and from there he worked his way up in special courts in The Hague, establishing his reputation as a defence lawyer. He helped to defend Liberia’s former president, Charles Taylor, against allegations of war crimes, and acted for William Ruto, now president of Kenya, in a crimes-against-humanity case at the ICC. (The case was dropped in 2016.) He also defended the son of the late Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, Seif al-Islam.

By the time he was elected chief prosecutor in 2021, Mr Khan had experience as a prosecutor at the ICC, too. He has tried to reinvigorate the court, which has a very modest record in bringing indictees to justice. He believes that the ICC should act swiftly on allegations, which informs his actions with regards to Gaza. As Mr Khan explained: “When people are in terror and fearing for their lives, the law has to be seen to be relevant to them.” He also believes that the ICC should be much closer to the victims of injustice whom it purports to serve. He visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in December, and spoke to the families of victims of Hamas’s attack.

In going after Mr Putin and Mr Netanyahu, Mr Khan also wants to banish the perception that the court merely picks on African warlords and dictators. If the law is seen as being “applied selectively”, he says, “we will be creating the conditions for its collapse.” The office of the prosecutor must never again be viewed as “a paper tiger”. But if his case against Israel proves to be legally flawed, as some believe it is, it could undermine the credibility of Mr Khan, and of the court itself. ■

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Карим Хан Международный уголовный суд главный прокурор г-н спор война ХАМАС решение