The British barrister taking on Israel and Hamas leaders

Karim Khan’s time as prosecutor at the International Criminal Court looked set to be defined by his probe into Russia’s war in Ukraine. But, he recently confided to a friend, he came to realise his most lasting legacy would be forged in the Middle East.

The announcement from Khan this week that the ICC was seeking arrest warrants against leaders of both Israel and Hamas sent shockwaves through the region — the first time that The Hague court has pursued the leader of a western-backed state.

Khan’s decision to target Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to move against both warring parties simultaneously, sparked fury in Israel. It has cast the British barrister into the heart of a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of lives, traumatised Israel, devastated Gaza and sparked protests from Islamabad to New York.

“This is massive,” said Wayne Jordash KC, a barrister focused on international law who advises the Palestinian Authority. “No more will [the ICC] be regarded as the court that only goes after the weak . . . This is definitely his legacy.”

The high-profile intervention in the Israel-Hamas conflict is a critical moment in the near 22-year history of the ICC, which was created to investigate genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is also pivotal for Khan, who took up the ICC role in 2021 after a long career in domestic and international criminal law, where he acted as both prosecutor and defender.

The 54-year-old, who was born in Edinburgh, has worked on cases at the tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and post-genocide Rwanda. He was also lead defence counsel for former Liberian president Charles Taylor at the special court set up after Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Peers point to the legal defence that Khan mounted on behalf of Kenya’s William Ruto, now the country’s president, as a career-defining moment. Ruto’s prosecution, related to post-election violence in 2007, was abandoned by the court in 2016 on grounds of insufficient evidence. The case was “monumental” for Khan and the ICC, according to a senior British barrister, who said it showed the institution was not politically motivated against Africa, a charge it has often faced.

Indeed, when Khan pitched for the top job as prosecutor in late 2020, he was presented as a moderniser of an institution that had a troubled first two decades. The court had faced criticism for failing to secure sufficient convictions, and for focusing too much on Africa.

Yet his elevation only came about after a messy process that heightened concerns about ICC governance. He was excluded from an initial shortlist, but was invited back along with others who had been longlisted after protests from member states. He eventually won against candidates from Ireland, Spain and Italy.

His innovations as prosecutor have included appointing 17 “eminent experts” with “cultural, linguistic and gender diversity”, including human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, to serve as special advisers. Advisers were given portfolios that included crimes of aggression, gender persecution and genocide.

Khan, who has Pakistani heritage, was inspired to pursue a human rights career by the atrocities of the 1990s Balkans conflict after seeing them on television, he told Counsel magazine in 2021. He started his career at the Crown Prosecution Service, the body responsible for criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.

He was described by one barrister as “ruthless” and a “political animal” who would not shy away from muscling in on other lawyers’ cases. Support for his appointment to the ICC came from politicians rather than the profession, that person said.

One national government official who has dealt with Khan called him a “great orator” and “brilliant reader” who has the legal abilities to take on such a tough case.

But the person also characterised the ICC prosecutor’s office as being “closed like an oyster”, with Khan reliant on a small group of trusted advisers.

The year before Khan became a prosecutor, the ICC had been rocked by a highly critical independent expert review of the court. Khan pledged improvements to what he termed a “dispiriting and disappointing picture” of a prosecutor’s office gripped by a “climate of bullying, low morale and general toxicity”.

Khan has made early attempts to demonstrate that he is handling the incendiary Israel-Hamas case in a reasonable way. The arrest warrants announcement was accompanied by the release of a report by a panel of legal experts convened by him to offer support for his investigation.

Still, even some of his allies question his decision to target Israel’s leader.

Irwin Cotler, international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, who has worked with Khan, said the decision to announce arrest warrants for senior figures in Israel and Hamas concurrently “does not comport with overall interests of justice”. Cotler is representing families of Israeli hostages.

The court already faces pressure from the US, where the administration of President Joe Biden has threatened to work with Congress on possible sanctions against the court in response to its moves against Israeli leaders.

The ICC did not make Khan available for an interview and declined to comment beyond publicly available information.

Perhaps the biggest potential hazard confronting Khan would come if he could not secure support from the very countries — particularly in Europe — that created the ICC, and which would have to execute any arrest warrants.

“If the state parties trail back and leave him out on his own, what’s he supposed to do?” the government official asked. “All he has is his rhetorical talent . . . and the conviction that he’s standing on the right side of history.”

Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv