Aviva Fried (correspondent in the United States) // Photo credit: Pedro Rances Mattey / ANADOLU / Anadolu via AFP
The announcement surprised the international community. This Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants against three Hamas leaders, but also against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister. Objective for the 54-year-old man, to show that the organization can still have influence.
The announcement caused controversy within the international community. Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), requests arrest warrants against three Hamas leaders, but also against Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister and his Minister of Defense. A decision which seeks above all to increase the influence of the organization tenfold.
A paradoxical face
It must be said that Karim Khan, a 54-year-old Briton, son of a Pakistani doctor, trained in the office of the prosecutor of the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. A passion for international law which comes to him, he says, from his faith as an Ahmadi Muslim, a branch of Islam which is the victim of persecution. A legacy that pushed Karim Khan to put himself passionately on the side of the victims, he regularly tells the press.
But paradoxically, the man is also used to the other side, that of defending criminals. And not the least since among his most famous clients, we can find Saïf al-Islam, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, still under an arrest warrant from the ICC. A curious mix of genres. But in an interview with CNN, the prosecutor defends himself from any partisan decision.
A potential ceasefire in Gaza undermined by the request for an arrest warrant?
“We try not to get carried away by our emotions, but to take our time following the evidence. No one is above the law,” he insists. The request for a mandate, however, moved very quickly, barely seven months after the Hamas attack and the start of the Israeli response. The ICC prosecutor was also due to go to the Jewish state to investigate. But he undoubtedly wanted to make a splash and prove to the world that the International Criminal Court serves a purpose, provoking a series of congratulations and indignation.
Thus, the United States denounced a scandalous arrest warrant request which could “undermine the ongoing talks for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip”, according to the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken .