The International Criminal Court (ICC) has a new attorney general. This is the British lawyer Karim Khan (51 years old) invested on June 16, 2021. He succeeds the Gambian Fatou Bensouda, who came to the end of her term started on June 15, 2012.
He became the third prosecutor general of the ICC, which was created in 2002 to try the worst atrocities in the world. Elected for nine years, the attorney general is responsible for initiating investigations and laying charges against suspects.
“We can’t invest that much, we can’t raise so much expectation and get so little, so often in the courtroom,” he said after taking the oath.
Mr. Karim Khan is a human rights specialist. He was elected in February 2021 in New York by the States Parties to the Rome Statute, the founding text of the ICC. Previously, he served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General, where he was responsible for leading the UN special investigation into the crimes of the jihadist group Islamic State. He has also intervened on the defense side in numerous trials before the ICC, including Seif al-Islam, a son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.