I watched this announcement
It was off putting for some reason. Why all of a sudden is this happening? Neither the US or Israel accept the authority of the ICC. Unless it’s convenient to them, that is. So, some additional digging was required on my part.. And my suspicions were justified
Palestinian rights groups snub ICC prosecutor
Palestinian human rights groups refused to meet the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan on Saturday, accusing him of favouring Israeli accusations of rights abuses over longstanding Palestinian charges.
Khan has been visiting Israel and the occupied West Bank following a request by a group representing families of victims of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen, but he was also due to meet Palestinian officials in Ramallah.
“As Palestinian human rights organizations, we decided not to meet him,” said Ammar Al-Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR).
“I think the way this visit has been handled shows tht Mr Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner,” he said.
Which brings us back to the scandal known as Karim Khan. A British citizen, his candidacy for ICC Prosecutor was energetically supported by the UK government. It was also championed by the US and Israel, two non-member states opposed to the very existence of the Court.Let’s get this straight? Two non member states champion this man’s candidacy. Why? How does that even make sense?
In 2021, Khan narrowly won election to a nine-year term. Some expressed the forlorn hope that Khan would prioritize efforts to revive the ICC’s stature and reputation, which by the time he took office was being widely derided as the “International Caucasian Court” and “International Criminal Court for Africa” on account of the cases it chose – and chose not to – investigate and prosecute. It was in protest at such biases that South Africa in 2015 announced its intention to withdraw from the Court, and initiated legislation to this effect that was abandoned only this year.
In practice,
Khan wasted no time aligning his agenda with that of those who supported his electoral campaign.Almost immediately upon assuming office, he informed the UN Security Council that he would prioritize only those cases referred to him by the Council, meaning that other files would be put to rest.
The ICC Palestine investigation, such as it was, effectively ceased to exist.Yet when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, which the UNSC could not have referred to the ICC without the consent of Moscow because it is a permanent member of the Council with veto power over its decisions, Khan rapidly reversed course on his previous commitments. It took him only a week to pop up in Kiev, where he announced that an investigation was immediately commencing. Little over a year later, he indicted none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin and demanded his extradition to The Hague. Throughout this period, the ICC’s Palestine investigation remained on ice.
There was considerably less spring in Khan’s step when the latest crisis in the Middle East erupted on 7 October. It was only at the very end of that month that he took the trouble to visit the region. Not Palestine or Israel, but Egypt. Claiming he had been prevented from entering the Gaza Strip yet offering no evidence he had either sought Egyptian permission to do so or been denied, he spoke to the assembled media in Cairo. In his remarks, he delivered a lengthy and impassioned denunciation of the 7 October Palestinian attacks, announced his availability to work with the Israeli authorities to prosecute those responsible for violations of the Rome Statute on that day, but also pointedly refrained from any reference to Israeli war crimes, which his predecessor Bensouda had already in 2019 stated were being committed in the context of her effort to launch an investigation of the Situation in Palestine.
Khan’s message to Israel, in sharp contrast to his condemnations of Palestinians attacks, was of a more general nature: that it had clear obligations under international law and would be held accountable for (unspecified) violations. While this discrepancy would not have been acceptable even on 6 October in view of what was already known about Israeli conduct in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2014, he was speaking almost a month after Israel launched the most intensive bombing campaign in the history of the Middle East, killing thousands of civilians and razing entire neighborhoods to the ground.
Khan further, and disingenuously, claimed that in 2021 he had established the “first dedicated team to investigate the Palestine situation”. Even though this team has in contrast to that sent to investigate Russian conduct in Ukraine never been referenced, sighted, or heard from, Khan on 3 December stated he would “further intensify” its efforts.
This is grandstanding at it’s finest. It will not be anything that resembles justice
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