Karim Khan’s job as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requires scrupulous and meticulous examination of evidence to bring cases against the alleged perpetrators of the world’s worst crimes.

Now the 54-year-old British lawyer faces his own investigation into allegations of misconduct against a member of his own office, which he strongly denies.

When Khan was sworn in as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, he said the court should be judged by its acts — “the proof of the pudding should be in the eating.”

And by seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, Khan has shown he is not afraid to take on the world’s most controversial cases.

The request followed an arrest warrant issued last year for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who immediately issued arrest warrants for Khan himself.

But Khan has faced controversy throughout a career that has included stints defending former Liberian president Charles Taylor against charges of war crimes in Sierra Leone.

Other high-profile clients included Kenyan President William Ruto in a crimes against humanity case at the ICC, which was eventually dropped, and late Libyan leader Muammar Kadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam.

Asked about “crossing the floor” — working as both a prosecutor and defense — Khan told trade publication OpinioJuris that it helps lawyers stay “grounded.”

It also prevents “corrosive traits, such as thinking that the defense attorney is the devil incarnate or that as a prosecutor you are doing ‘God’s work,'” he said.

Initially criticized for not acting quickly enough to prevent atrocities in Gaza, Khan sparked a firestorm when he sought arrest warrants for the war.

Netanyahu called it “a moral scandal of historic proportions.” For US President Joe Biden, it was “outrageous”.

Just before Khan’s request, senior US Republicans wrote a letter threatening to bar him and his family from the United States, ending ominously with “you have been warned.”

But Khan told CNN: “This is not a witch hunt. This is not some kind of emotional reaction to noise… It is a forensic process that is expected of us as international prosecutors.”

– “Guilty as charged” –

Born in Scotland, Khan was educated at Silcoates Private School in northern England before studying law at King’s College, London.

His father was Pakistani, his mother British, and he is a member of the minority Muslim sect Ahmadiyya, sometimes peppering his speeches with “inshallah” (God willing).

Called to the bar in 1992, he continued to cut his teeth in international law at the former Yugoslav and Rwandan war crimes tribunals from 1997 to 2000.

He later represented survivors and relatives of victims of Cambodia’s 1970s Khmer Rouge regime at his UN-backed court in the late 2000s.

His other roles included a stint at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague, set up to bring to justice the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005.

More recently, he led the UN’s special inquiry into the crimes of the Islamic State group and called for Nuremberg-like trials of Nazi leaders.

Initially absent from a list of candidates for the ICC’s top prosecutor post, Khan was reportedly added at the insistence of the Kenyan government.

The ICC selection committee described him as a “charismatic and articulate communicator who is well aware of his achievements”.

“I applied because I thought I could do the role. If the Search Committee thought that was arrogance, then I’m guilty as charged,” Khan said.

In his speeches, he is direct, with a strong command of oratory, sprinkled with sprinkles of British humour.

“From what I’ve seen, Karim Khan seems like a no-nonsense lawyer who I respect quite a bit,” Melanie O’Brien, a visiting professor of international law at the University of Minnesota, told AFP.

An ICC prosecutor “has to have a certain strength because you know you’re going to face people who don’t agree with you and don’t agree with the court in general,” she added.

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