Karim Khan - leaving an investigative team for a court

15 June 2021 By

for JusticeInfo.net

“At UNITAD, we are an investigative team on the lookout for a court,” says British lawyer Karim Khan after having led the Daesh / ISIL investigations for the last three years. The man who is about to take over this week from Gambian Fatou Bensouda as head of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court looks back in this podcast, produced by our partners at Asymmetrical Haircuts, at his work as head of UNITAD. Victims have the right to be impatient, he says, while hoping that a draft law will soon finally allow these crimes to be tried effectively in Iraq.

Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry in Iraq (pictured here in the holy city of Najaf), is taking over this week the office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. © Haidar Hamdani / AFP

1 min 18Approximate reading time

To listen to the podcast, click on the “play” button below:

For the last installation of our Prosecutor Files, this week we caught up with incoming ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, who graciously agreed to be on our podcast as a man who does not need to worry too much about haircuts (asymmetrical or otherwise).

Karim is leaving a three-year long position as Head of UNITAD — the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh. How did the experience shape him professionally and influence his future approach to the ICC Prosecutor job? We discussed dealing with pressure and expectations from institutions and victims, new approaches, and what’s next for the pursuit of justice in Iraq.

For context, you can have a look at two guides for investigators which UNITAD produced under Karim’s leadership, about how to deal with witnesses who’ve experienced trauma and the other about use of technology in international criminal investigations.

Aside from outing himself as an Asymmetrical Haircuts fan, Karim just finished reading The Golden Thread, by Ravi Somaiya, an investigation about the plane crash that killed UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961.

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ASYMMETRICAL HAIRCUTS

This podcast has been published as part of a partnership between JusticeInfo.net and Asymmetrical Haircuts, a podcast on international justice produced from The Hague by journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, who retain full control and independence over the contents of the podcast.