The ICC’s investigation of its chief prosecutor has been a failure |
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.
It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.
They assigned fact-finding to the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). It interviewed the complainant as well as Khan and other people in the prosecutor’s office. Yet shockingly, it did not decide what had happened. It detailed the complainant’s testimony and Khan’s denials but refused to make the assessments of credibility that were needed to decide who was telling the truth. On the key matters in dispute, it made no findings of fact at all.
For example, the complainant, who is married and has a child, alleged a pattern of coercive sexual behavior by Khan that occurred in hotel rooms during work trips, in Khan’s office at the ICC, and at his home. The OIOS reported her detailed testimony but never opined whether she was credible in revealing alleging these humiliating and painful encounters, ones that reportedly led to “suicidal thoughts” and placement on a “suicide watch.”
When the OIOS asked Khan whether he had had a sexual relationship with the complainant, he gave a prepared statement that he had never engaged in any prohibited conduct with her that “could be construed as inappropriate, unwelcome or abusive.” He reinforced this in his recent interview with Mehdi Hassan once again stating that he did not have a “sexual relationship” with her and denying allegations of sexual misconduct.
Instead of making the credibility determinations needed to resolve this differing testimony, the OIOS delivered a 150-page “he said, she said” account.
That, in turn, was handed to a panel of three judges who had been tasked to advise the ICC’s member states by assessing........