Never mind that he has recently issued arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister, Mr. Gallant, Mr. Karim Khan the British national who is the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague was largely a tool in the Western political establishment to embarrass and tarnish non-Western political figures, majorly from Africa, but was recently extended to the Russian leader, President Vladimir Putin. For the same arrest warrant, issued against the Israeli Prime Minister and former Defence Minister, the West and the U.S have been violently denouncing the effrontery of the ICC prosecutor to incriminate Mr. Netanyahu as the court indictee.
But Mr. Karim Khan himself has a heavy moral albatross hanging on his neck. After his appointment to head the prosecution of the ICC was cheered by key Western countries, including Isreal, he was supposed to function exclusively as an attack dog focused on non-Western political figures.
As an extension of the U.S led Western proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, he issued the notorious warrant to arrest Russian leader, whose alleged infraction consisted chiefly in removing children to safety from combat zones. Despite that the allegation for which the arrest warrant was issued cannot stand to any serious legal, let alone moral, scrutiny, the Western political establishment and their affiliated media (which basks in tainted free speech and independence) went to town to smear the Russian leader, claiming their obligation to arrest him, if he steps foot on their soil. Russia, as a non-signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, deplored the arrest warrant and maintained that it neither recognises the court nor is under any obligations to take serious, let alone, carry out its pronouncements.
It was obvious from the very beginning that the purported arrest warrant of the Russian leader was a compelling travesty, without any legal value, except for the political embarrassment and intimidation of Moscow. But, even on these, Moscow refuted the slander and the flagging reputation of ICC, fell further to the mud as a mere political tool to intimidate non-Western political figures.
Karim Khan, now blustering to fend off allegation of sexual misdemeanor against the staff of his office, comes with the deadly moral stigma of one who came to equity without clean hands. His moral frailty, which has shown in his alleged predatory behaviour against the staff of his office, has also demonstrated his character flaw and why he so fitted in, to take on, the job of a political hunter disguised as an international court prosecutor.
With an obvious reputational damage, staring him in the face, the damage control of lamely indicting the Western propped-Israeli Prime Minister, will offer no redemption to the crises of his flaw character. The ICC itself has done very little to shake off, a dominant view on non-Western communities that it is essentially, an institutional political witch-hunt and this account for some of its anomalies, such as Western countries, chiefly, the U.S picking up some of its bills, but stays away from its jurisdiction. Mr. Karim Khan like the ICC itself has so much soul-searching to do, as to their relevance in an emerging trends of multilateralism with implications for broader and wider institutional representations for genuinely global governance.
Christopher Akali, a commentator on international affairs writes form Abuja.