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Agence France-Presse

British human rights lawyer Karim Khan was elected Friday as the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, a politically daunting position whose incumbent was slapped with US sanctions.
Khan, 50, previously led a special UN investigation into crimes by the Islamic State extremist group in which he pressed for a trial on the lines of Nuremberg for Nazi war criminals.
More controversially, he also represented late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s son Seif al-Islam.
Khan will be only the third prosecutor of the ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda, who has outraged Washington through her investigations into the Afghanistan war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ICC nations failed to reach a consensus choice, triggering a vote in New York among four candidates in which Khan won on the second ballot with 72 votes.

In the first round, he did not win a majority but narrowly edged out Ireland’s Fergal Gaynor, who has represented victims before the ICC in the Afghan war investigation and in a case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The United Nations has 193 member states but only 123 are in the ICC, with the United States, Israel, China and Russia notably absent.
Khan will take on a bulging file of difficult cases at a tribunal whose legitimacy is constantly under attack.
“There are many places where the ICC could take action,” one UN envoy said Friday on condition of anonymity, adding he hoped the voting would not stretch over several days.
“We don’t need less ICC but more ICC,” he said.
Israel’s Netanyahu slams ICC ruling paving way for war crimes investigation
The new prosecutor’s first tasks will include deciding the next steps on the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan and the hugely contentious investigation into the 2014 Israel-Palestinian conflict in Gaza.
The administration of then US president Donald Trump hit Bensouda and another senior ICC official last year with sanctions including a travel ban and asset freeze after she launched the investigation that includes alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Israel and the United States have also strongly opposed the investigation into alleged war crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.

ICC judges however ruled last week that the court had jurisdiction over the situation in the Palestinian territories, paving the way for a full investigation after a five-year preliminary investigation opened by Bensouda.
The new US administration of President Joe Biden has signalled a less confrontational line but has not said whether it will drop sanctions against Bensouda, who has attacked the “unacceptable” measures.
Other candidates for the job included Spanish judge Carlos Castresana, who previously headed a UN panel combating crime and corruption in Guatemala but resigned in 2010 alleging “systemic attacks” by power-hungry officials, and Francesco Lo Voi, an Italian prosecutor of the Mafia.
Bensouda has had a mixed record in her tenure since 2012 even as she expanded – some analysts say overextended – the court’s reach.
Jailed Chinese lawyer Yu Wensheng wins human rights award
Under her leadership, former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was cleared of crimes against humanity, while former DR Congo vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba was acquitted on appeal.
Kenya’s Kenyatta also saw charges of crimes against humanity over electoral bloodshed dropped by Bensouda.
But Bensouda has recently secured high-profile convictions against Ugandan child soldier-turned-Lord’s Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen and Congolese warlord Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda.
She has also been credited with improving the prosecutor’s office compared with her predecessor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose leadership was described as “autocratic” in an investigation ordered by the ICC into the Kenyatta case.
The ICC is the world’s only permanent war crimes court, after years when the only route to justice for atrocities in countries like Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia was separate tribunals.
Hamstrung from the start by the refusal of the United States, Russia and China to join, the court has since faced criticism for having mainly taken on cases from poorer African nations.


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International Criminal Court

British lawyer Karim Khan wins daunting job of International Criminal Court prosecutor

British human rights lawyer Karim Khan was elected to be the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Friday. Photo: AFP

-FILE- In this Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020, file photo the sun bounces off the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. Member states of the International Criminal Court are electing a new prosecutor on Friday Feb. 12, 2021, ending a drawn-out and divisive process to appoint a replacement for incumbent Fatou Bensouda when her nine-year term expires later this year. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)

FILE PHOTO: Public Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda attends the trial for Malian Islamist militant Al-Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud at the ICC (International Criminal Court) in the Hague, the Netherlands July 8,2019. REUTERS/Eva Plevier/Pool/File Photo

Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu slams International Criminal Court ruling paving way for war crimes investigation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: AFP

International Criminal Court clears way for war crimes probe of Israeli actions

A protester holds a Palestinian flag during a protest against the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Beit Dajan, east of Nablus, on Friday. Photo: Xinhua

epa08989180 A general view of the Israeli separation barrier and the West Bank city of Qalqilya in the background, as seen from the Israeli highway, near the Israeli city of Kefar Sava, 05 February 2021. EPA-EFE/ATEF SAFADI

FILE - In this Tuesday Aug. 28, 2018 file photo, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICC says its jurisdiction extends to territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, appearing to clear the way for its chief prosecutor to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions. Bensouda, said in 2019 that there was a “reasonable basis” to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. (Bas Czerwinski/Pool file via AP, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2021 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks following his meeting with US Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin, in Jerusalem. Netanyahu has named Aaron Klein, a former journalist with the right-wing Breitbart news site, as his campaign chief for March 23 national elections. Klein, who has written a number of books that questioned Barack Obama's fitness for the presidency, confirmed his new appointment to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (Emil Salman/Pool via AP, File)

ICC rejects Uygur calls to investigate China for genocide

A Chinese police officer takes his position by the road near what is officially called a vocational education centre in Xinjiang in September 2018. Photo: Reuters

FILE- In this Wednesday, April 4, 2018 file photo, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda waits at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. The outgoing prosecutor of the International Criminal Court hit out Monday at sanctions slapped on her by the Trump Adminstration in her last speech to an annual gathering of the court's member states before she leaves office next year. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, FILE)

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world’s only permanent war crimes court
Khan will be only the third prosecutor of the ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda



Khan previously led a special UN investigation into crimes by the Islamic State extremist group in which he pressed for a trial on the lines of Nuremberg for Nazi war criminals.


British lawyer Karim Khan wins daunting job of International Criminal Court prosecutor

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world’s only permanent war crimes court Khan will be only the third prosecutor of the ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the world’s only permanent war crimes court

Khan will be only the third prosecutor of the ICC, taking over in June from Gambian-born Fatou Bensouda