Among supporters of justice for the victims of international crimes, it may be an unpopular opinion to second-guess the hero of the moment, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan.
This week, Mr Khan announced his bombshell application to seek warrants for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for enacting policies of mass starvation against civilians in Gaza, among other alleged atrocities. He also seeks the arrest of three leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
But there is reason to believe the Israeli charges will result in no legal justice for Palestinian victims at all, perhaps even by design.
On the face of things, Mr Khan’s prosecution is as noble as he is tough. The video of his read-out of the charges – “murder”, “extermination”, “starvation”, as he stares resolutely into the camera – will haunt Mr Netanyahu’s and Mr Gallant’s legacies forever.
A closer reading of Mr Khan’s time in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), however, suggests his prosecutions are motivated more by political aims than the prospect of a conviction. That is the common theme that resolves what might otherwise appear to be glaring inconsistencies in his words and actions since he took office, in June 2021.
Mr Khan’s prosecutorial career at the ICC was launched on the implicit basis that he was unlikely ever to display the kind of boldness the world saw in his Palestine-Israel announcement video. He was, his detractors at the time said, the West’s candidate for the job, and the evidence for that came quickly in the way he handled the Court’s Afghanistan investigation.
The year before Mr Khan’s appointment, his predecessor Fatou Bensouda opened an investigation into Afghanistan that covered international crimes committed by all parties to the conflict there since 2003, when Afghanistan signed the ICC’s founding document, the Rome Statute. “All parties” includes personnel from the US, Nato, the Afghan republic government, the Taliban and the terrorist group ISIS-K.
It was – and remains – the only time the ICC has probed crimes committed by US forces, which allegedly included extrajudicial killings and torture. Ms Bensouda came under immense pressure; she and even her family were sanctioned by the US government. Mr Khan’s recent decision to prosecute Israeli leaders has brought him threats of similar American sanctions.
When Ms Bensouda’s term was coming to an end and it was time for the court’s member states – which includes many Nato countries and other US allies – to elect a new prosecutor, Mr Khan was not initially on the shortlist. He emerged after rumours of considerable lobbying from western governments who were looking for someone who could be more “pragmatic” and “realistic” in the way they approached the job.
In April 2021, two months after Mr Khan was chosen, the American Society of International Law published a report authored by former top US State Department lawyers on how Washington could improve its relationship with the Court. It could also be read – and indeed was, by many – as full of hints on how the Court could improve its relationship with Washington.
The report notes the following about Karim Khan: “The new prosecutor may be more willing to revisit past decisions with a fresh eye if provided with persuasive arguments or compelling evidence of the wisdom of reconsidering ... prior approaches.”
One of the “persuasive arguments” the report cites is that of former US legal adviser John Bellinger, who said: “There is no possibility that any US official will ever be arrested and prosecuted in The Hague … The likelihood of prosecutions is zero.”
In other words, was it really worthy of the time of a new prosecutor trying to prove himself to charge Americans whom he had virtually no prospect of apprehending? After all, the Rome Statute does not allow conviction in absentia.
Election-year Karim Khan seemed to agree with that assessment. He soon “deprioritised” the US and its allies in the Afghanistan investigation he inherited from Ms Bensouda, and focused entirely instead on prosecuting the Taliban and ISIS-K.
It is hard to overstate the psychological impact this decision has had on Afghan victims. As Shaharzad Akbar, former chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, put it: “This decision reinforces the perception that these institutions set up in the West and by the West are just instruments for the West’s political agenda.”
In my conversations with Afghan civilians and members of the Taliban, they have echoed that sentiment strongly. The Taliban, who now rule Afghanistan, reject the ICC’s mandate on what they claim are religious grounds. But the Court’s perceived partiality has diminished the chances that they, as the de-facto inheritor of Afghanistan’s signature on the Rome Statute, might ever co-operate with international tribunals.
Khan’s time in office suggests his prosecutions are motivated more by political aims than the prospect of a conviction
Mr Khan did not frame his decision at the time as a pragmatic one – that would have been surprising, and disrespectful to the victims of western and Afghan republic forces’ crimes. Instead, his stated rationale was that “the worst crimes” were committed by the Taliban and ISIS-K.
But contrast that with his statements this week when he was accused of drawing an equivalence between Israel and Hamas. Mr Khan told CNN that the Prosecutor’s mandate is not concerned with which perpetrator is worse – only with the equal rights of all victims to see justice.
The absence of that principled stand on behalf of Afghan victims could lead one to reasonably conclude that Mr Khan is indeed every bit the pragmatist Washington pegged him for, but what the US didn’t count on was that his pragmatism cuts both ways and in line with his – not victims’ – interests. Election-year Karim Khan could afford to deprioritise crimes that – compared to what is happening in Gaza today – few around the world seemed to care about. But in 2024 Karim Khan has a chance to make history by being the first Prosecutor to take on the leader of a “western-style democracy”.
Nonetheless, boldness does not in itself secure a conviction. It is more likely to do the opposite. If Mr Khan wants to see an Israeli who is found guilty of committing war crimes in handcuffs, he might have better luck prosecuting an active-duty military officer first. When he joined the OTP, long before the Gaza war began, a full dossier from the Court’s pre-existing Palestine investigation was sitting on his desk, which he could have used to get warrants for lower-level perpetrators, and those would have had a much higher chance of being enforced.
They still do; Mr Netanyahu’s chances of ever appearing in the dock over Gaza are about as high as George W Bush’s over Afghanistan. And observers of international criminal trials will note that in the most successful ones – the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia being a good example – prosecutors start lower down the conviction ladder and work their way up.
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There is a long-standing trope in legal dramas of the prosecutor who wants to make a name for themselves by going after the most prominent person they can, rather than lower-level suspects more easily tied to the crime. Ironically, when Mr Khan was a defence lawyer arguing cases before the ICC nearly a decade ago, he heavily implied the Prosecutor at the time, Luis Moreno Ocampo, was one such character.
Today, it is Mr Khan whose track record shows a string of probably unenforceable warrants that are extremely unlikely to lead to trial (Russian President Vladimir Putin being another example). This indicates, as someone who used to work in the OTP put it to me, that “Mr Khan is a symbolic prosecutor rather than a realistic one – exactly the opposite of what he campaigned for [to get the job]”.
To be fair to Mr Khan, there is an argument to be made that he is working in the service of a broader conception of international justice, one that prioritises symbolism, and says that convictions are not as important as using the Court's moral weight to change the political winds against those who commit crimes. But that interpretation is cynical in its own way. The court is not merely a creative tool for political advocacy.
To suggest that convictions should be subordinate to political aims is to suggest that the Court's entire proceedings are largely meant to be theatre. Arrest warrants have huge symbolic value, and they have their own hard political value, too. But at the end of the day, they are an instrument for something more concrete: an actual arrest. If ICC suspects are never arrested, then the court's credibility diminishes, and there isn't much moral weight to throw around anyway.
So Mr Khan can be credited with making history for the Palestinian cause. He will be perceived by many as having shown more courage to take on the Netanyahu government than most hand-wringing politicians ever have. But for the very real victims of war crimes – from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Palestine – the prosecutor’s courage only counts insofar as it gets a conviction.
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Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
Price: From Dh126,000
Available: Now
THE SPECS
Aston Martin Rapide AMR
Engine: 6.0-litre V12
Transmission: Touchtronic III eight-speed automatic
Power: 595bhp
Torque: 630Nm
Price: Dh999,563
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
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CREW
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Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
SPECS
Mini John Cooper Works Clubman and Mini John Cooper Works Countryman
Engine: two-litre 4-cylinder turbo
Transmission: nine-speed automatic
Power: 306hp
Torque: 450Nm
Price: JCW Clubman, Dh220,500; JCW Countryman, Dh225,500
The Specs
Price, base Dh379,000
Engine 2.9-litre, twin-turbo V6
Gearbox eight-speed automatic
Power 503bhp
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Three ways to boost your credit score
Marwan Lutfi says the core fundamentals that drive better payment behaviour and can improve your credit score are:
1. Make sure you make your payments on time;
2. Limit the number of products you borrow on: the more loans and credit cards you have, the more it will affect your credit score;
3. Don't max out all your debts: how much you maximise those credit facilities will have an impact. If you have five credit cards and utilise 90 per cent of that credit, it will negatively affect your score.
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Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
GAC GS8 Specs
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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi
From: Dara
To: Team@
Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT
Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East
Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.
Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.
I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.
This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.
It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.
Uber on,
Dara
It Was Just an Accident
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Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr
Rating: 4/5
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PROFILE OF SWVL
Started: April 2017
Founders: Mostafa Kandil, Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport
Size: 450 employees
Investment: approximately $80 million
Investors include: Dubai’s Beco Capital, US’s Endeavor Catalyst, China’s MSA, Egypt’s Sawari Ventures, Sweden’s Vostok New Ventures, Property Finder CEO Michael Lahyani
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Essentials
The flights
Whether you trek after mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda or the Congo, the most convenient international airport is in Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali. There are direct flights from Dubai a couple of days a week with RwandAir. Otherwise, an indirect route is available via Nairobi with Kenya Airways. Flydubai flies to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, via Entebbe in Uganda. Expect to pay from US$350 (Dh1,286) return, including taxes.
The tours
Superb ape-watching tours that take in all three gorilla countries mentioned above are run by Natural World Safaris. In September, the company will be operating a unique Ugandan ape safari guided by well-known primatologist Ben Garrod.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, local operator Kivu Travel can organise pretty much any kind of safari throughout the Virunga National Park and elsewhere in eastern Congo.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
German intelligence warnings
- 2002: "Hezbollah supporters feared becoming a target of security services because of the effects of [9/11] ... discussions on Hezbollah policy moved from mosques into smaller circles in private homes." Supporters in Germany: 800
- 2013: "Financial and logistical support from Germany for Hezbollah in Lebanon supports the armed struggle against Israel ... Hezbollah supporters in Germany hold back from actions that would gain publicity." Supporters in Germany: 950
- 2023: "It must be reckoned with that Hezbollah will continue to plan terrorist actions outside the Middle East against Israel or Israeli interests." Supporters in Germany: 1,250
Source: Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
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Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
