Briton Karim Khan was elected by Parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to replace Gambian Fatou Bensouda as the new prosecutor for a nine-year term commencing June 16.

Khan won after a secret ballot conducted on Friday to beat three other candidates to become the third Prosecutor of the Hague court after Argentine Luis Moreno Ocampo and Bensouda.

The human rights lawyer is a barrister in Britain and is best known for leading the UN special investigative team that looked into Islamic State (IS) crimes in Iraq.

Khan has a law career spanning 27 years, is the Queen’s Counsel and has worked for almost all international criminal tribunal as a prosecutor, defence lawyer and as counsel for war victims.

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In Kenya, he is best remembered for defending Deputy President William Ruto at the Hague in a case over to the 2007 post-election chaos but Bensouda later controversially dropped the case.


ICC member states failed to reach a consensus choice, and triggered a vote in New York among four top candidates before Khan emerged victorious on the second ballot with 72 votes.

He beat Ireland’s Fergal Gaynor, who once represented victims of the Kenyan electoral violence in a case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta at the ICC.

Bensouda landed in trouble after former US President Donald Trump’s government sanctioned her and other staff members in 2020 over her probe into possible war crimes in Afghanistan, including by US troops despite the US not being a member of the Hague court.

However, a US State Department spokesman last month said the new President Joe Biden’s administration would review the sanctions issued by his predecessor on the ICC officials.


Last week, Hague said it had jurisdiction over war crimes in Palestinian territories, which could result in an inquiry which has been opposed by Israel and America who are not ICC members.

The Hague-based court, which has 123 member-states, was founded on July 1, 2002 to handle crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and crimes of aggression across the globe.

United Nations (UN) has 193 member states but only 123 are member states of the ICC, with US, China, Israel and Russia among countries which have refused to ratify the Rome Statute.