BORIS JOHNSON’S government was cock-a-hoop. The election on February 12th of Karim Khan, a British barrister, as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague was surely a sign that Britain still had diplomatic heft post-Brexit. Mr Khan’s appointment would be “pivotal in ensuring we hold those responsible for the most heinous crimes to account,” beamed Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary.
But he has critics, too. Last month 22 African human-rights groups, most of them Kenyan, wrote to the ICC’s member states urging them not to back Mr Khan’s candidacy. Their concerns stemmed mainly from his role as chief defence counsel for William Ruto, now Kenya’s deputy president, in one of the most troubled trials before the ICC.
There is no suggestion, of course, that Mr Khan, who will begin his nine-year term in June, did anything wrong in defending Mr Ruto. No issues have been raised about his other dodgy clients, who included Charles Taylor, a former dictator of Liberia, and Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, the son of Libya’s former despot. Every defendant is entitled to a lawyer, and lawyers have a duty to represent their clients to the best of their ability.
Mr Khan’s strident conduct of the defence won him much admiration among Kenya’s ruling politicians. In turn he has them to thank for his new position. Mr Khan’s two predecessors were both appointed by consensus among the ICC’s members. In the middle of last year the ICC’s selection committee released a shortlist of four names that did not include Mr Khan’s.