Boy, they sure know how to pick ’em at those UN bodies. From the bottom up to the very top. In the latest scandal, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is under investigation for ‘sexual misconduct’.
The governing body of the [ICC] has announced an external investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who has denied the claims.
Just another day at the UN, basically.
UN ‘peacekeepers’ have been repeatedly involved in sexual abuse, frequently of children, on massive scales. In just over a decade, there were almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other UN personnel around the world. Even the UN admits it: an internal report from 2016 cited 69 credible reports, from 21 countries, in just the previous year. That is widely regarded as an almost certain wild under-count.
The sleazy rot goes all the way to the top. In 2016, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri was forced to resign after hundreds of sexual harassment allegations were made against him. Women who worked under (metaphorically) Pachauri ‘had two choices’, according to former employee Dilip Ahuja. “They could either succumb to Pachauri’s advances, or leave.”
And so it goes…
Mr Khan has reportedly been accused of sexual misconduct towards a member of his office, but he has said there was “no truth to suggestions” of such behaviour.
Like New Zealand’s own Golly G, the Pakistani-British Khan has had some rather odd clients, for a supposed ‘human-rights’ lawyer.
Mr Khan has courted controversy throughout a career that has included stints defending Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor against allegations of war crimes in Sierra Leone.
Other high-profile clients have included Kenya’s President William Ruto in a crimes-against-humanity case at the ICC that was eventually dropped, and the son of late Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Seif al-Islam.
Khan also seems to have the sort of autocratic self-regard that would make a mediaeval pope or an Anthony Fauci blush.
Mr Khan has fiercely defended the independence of the office of the ICC prosecutor, warning critics not to threaten him or they may find themselves in hot legal water.
But (allegedly!) being as handsy as an Indian railroad engineer is the least of the stinks around Khan and his ICC.
It’s long been alleged that the ICC is a systemically anti-Israel body. Not without reason: at its inception, the ICC retrospectively re-classified the voluntary civilian migration of Jews into the areas of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, now called the West Bank, as a ‘war crime’.
The bias at the ICC runs even deeper in its chief prosecutor. Khan’s mentor and godfather – whose influence, Khan says, was ‘pivotal’ – was Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan’s first foreign minister. Khan the Elder was a notorious anti-Semite who strenuously opposed Israel’s establishment and existence, including when he was president of the UN General Assembly.
He’s made sure to surround himself with like anti-Israel minds.
The prosecutor’s decision to issue warrants [against Israeli leaders] was based in part on the advice of several consultants he had handpicked. Many of them already had a longstanding bias against the Jewish state; they’ve been publicly condemning Israel and declaring it guilty of war crimes for years. By picking experts who had taken clear positions on the questions they were being asked to consider, Mr Khan further undermined the credibility and neutrality of any prosecution.
Announcing the charges against Netanyahu and others, Khan singled out University of Copenhagen professor Kevin Jon Heller for thanks. Heller is a vociferous supporter of the virulently anti-Semitic ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions movement’ (BDS) movement. Heller calls Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump ‘two criminals conspiring to commit criminal acts against #Palestine and #Palestinians’.
Obviously a completely unbiased umpire.
Khan also relies on British left-wing Labour member, Baroness Helena Kennedy. Kennedy frequently peddles fake anti-Israel conspiracy theories.
Mr Khan chose them despite their strong, legally controversial stances on the issues they were supposed to examine neutrally […]
The selection of the panel seems to violate the ICC Code of Conduct for the Office of the Prosecutor, which demands that its officials “refrain from any activity which is likely to negatively affect the confidence of others in the independence or integrity of the Office.” The Code of Conduct says the “impartiality” section requires “refraining from expressing an opinion that could, objectively, adversely affect the required impartiality, whether through communications media, in writing or public addresses.”
Khan contradicts the basic rules of international law of armed conflict allowing attacks on combatants by treating Hamas combatants embedded in urban areas as civilians. He also invents a perverse rule requiring the direct provision of humanitarian aid to the enemy in armed conflict.
An anti-Semitic sexual predator (allegedly!)? Sounds like the very model of a modern UN employee.
