标签： Asia

Nearly seven years after the deadliest terror attack in New Zealand’s modern history, the country’s Court of Appeal has dealt a final blow to the white supremacist perpetrator’s attempt to overturn his convictions and life-without-parole sentence.

Brenton Tarrant, a 35-year-old Australian-born extremist, is currently serving the remainder of his life behind bars with no possibility of release for the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that left 51 Muslim worshippers dead and another 40 injured. The attack, carried out at two separate mosques — Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre — was partially live-streamed by Tarrant to his followers on fringe online platforms, marking a shocking moment of white supremacist violence that rippled across the globe.

Tarrant originally pleaded guilty to all counts of murder and attempted murder in 2020, avoiding a prolonged public trial that would have forced survivors and victim families to relive the trauma of the attack. In his appeal, heard over a week-long session in February this year, Tarrant argued that his prison conditions at the time of his guilty plea amounted to “torturous and inhumane” treatment, which left him unable to make rational, legally sound decisions. He further claimed that he entered his guilty plea while in an irrational, compromised mental state, and asked the court to throw out both his convictions and his sentence.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal released a unanimous ruling rejecting Tarrant’s appeal in its entirety. The court wrote that the core facts of Tarrant’s crimes are “beyond dispute”, and that his legal arguments were “utterly devoid of merit”. Judges found that Tarrant’s claims of compromised mental capacity and coercive prison conditions were inconsistent on their face and unsupported by witness testimony, concluding that he had never been coerced or pressured to enter a guilty plea. “He has not identified any arguable defence, or indeed any defence known to the law. We have also rejected his claim that his guilty pleas were the product of him having an irrational state of mind induced by his prison conditions,” the ruling read.

For family members of the attack’s victims, Thursday’s ruling brings a long-awaited sense of closure after months of renewed trauma triggered by the appeal process. Aya al-Umari, who lost her older brother Hussein in the shootings, told the BBC she felt “pleased and relieved” by the court’s decision, and welcomed the confirmation that justice had been upheld. “I was confident that there were no solid grounds for the appeal, and the decision today confirms that,” al-Umari said. She added that while she had hoped the original sentencing would bring an end to the legal process and allow her and other families to begin healing, the appeal forced survivors to revisit the darkest moments of their trauma. “Hearing the outcome today really gives that reassurance and comfort around the right processes being followed,” she said.

Beyond the legal proceedings, the 2019 Christchurch attack sparked sweeping policy change across New Zealand. Within one month of the shootings, the country’s parliament passed legislation by an overwhelming majority to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons and key components used to modify prohibited firearms. The government also launched a large-scale gun buy-back scheme, offering financial compensation to owners who turned in newly outlawed weapons in a bid to reduce the country’s overall firearm stock.

Records of the case show Tarrant, who was born in New South Wales, Australia, relocated to New Zealand in 2017. Prosecutors have confirmed he began planning his attack on the country’s Muslim community shortly after moving. In the hours before he carried out the shootings, Tarrant posted a 74-page manifesto online that laid out his violent white supremacist and anti-Muslim ideology, and he had long engaged with far-right extremist communities on fringe online platforms.

Just 14 months ago, Myanmar’s military junta found itself on the brink of strategic collapse in the country’s brutal ongoing civil war. An alliance of veteran ethnic militias had pushed junta forces out of vast territories in northern Myanmar, while pro-democracy guerrilla groups and long-standing opposition factions forced the military into defensive positions across nearly every other region of the country. Today, that dynamic has flipped dramatically, reshaping the trajectory of a conflict that has displaced millions and killed tens of thousands since the 2021 military coup.

Fueled by a massive expansion of its ranks from tens of thousands of newly conscripted troops, the Tatmadaw – Myanmar’s official military – has clawed back significant swathes of territory it lost in 2023, and is now positioning to launch a broad new national offensive. In contrast, the anti-junta resistance movement has been crippled by key defections, internal factional infighting, and crippling supply shortages that have weakened its operational capacity across multiple front lines.

“I think we’re nearing a crescendo here where the Tatmadaw is going to reassert itself and the large-scale organized resistance movement is going to peter out,” explained Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who leads the organization’s Myanmar Conflict Map project. “That doesn’t mean scattered armed resistance will disappear entirely – armed resistance will always continue in Myanmar until there’s a comprehensive, negotiated political solution. But the Tatmadaw has retaken the strategic initiative, and every major development now plays to its advantage.”

Five years of continuous conflict – a timeline that stretches back to the immediate aftermath of the 2021 coup that ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi – has left both anti-junta fighters and the general public deeply war-weary. The conflict has claimed more than 8,000 civilian lives and forced more than 3 million people to flee their homes, according to UN estimates. “There are many saying that the local population doesn’t care much who will win the war, but just want the fighting to stop,” noted Aung Thu Nyein, a Myanmar-based political analyst who currently works in neighboring Thailand, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Beyond internal fatigue, the resistance has also been undermined by shifting geopolitical pressure from China, which holds massive economic and strategic stakes in Myanmar. Myanmar is a critical supplier of rare earth elements and other key natural resources to Beijing, which has invested billions of dollars in cross-border infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines, mines, and connectivity projects. China is also one of the Tatmadaw’s two largest arms suppliers, alongside Russia, and maintains significant influence over ethnic paramilitary groups that operate along the Sino-Myanmar border.

Initially, Beijing supported the major October 2023 anti-junta offensive launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of three ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), because it was angered that the military government had allowed rampant transnational organized crime to spread in border regions. But that support quickly evaporated: China cut off all arms and ammunition supplies to the alliance and pressured its members to halt offensive operations. Today, two of the alliance’s three core members – the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – have signed Chinese-brokered ceasefires with the Tatmadaw, leaving only the Arakan Army still active in combat in western Rakhine State.

The anti-junta resistance is split between two broad blocs: the long-standing ethnic minority EAOs that predate the 2021 coup, and newer pro-democracy People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) that formed after the coup, most of which are affiliated with the National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow administration formed by ousted members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Resistance leaders warn that persistent divides between these groups have left them vulnerable to the Tatmadaw’s renewed momentum.

“Although there is a shared understanding of the need to overthrow the military dictatorship and move toward a future federal union, there are still gaps and differences in overall grand strategy and tactics,” said the Burma Liberation Democratic Front, a pro-democracy resistance group active in Sagaing and Mandalay regions, in a written statement to AP. “There are still differences in positions, perspectives, and approaches. Many continue to hold onto ethnic, regional, and organizational interests and attachments.” The group added that the Tatmadaw is actively exploiting these rifts, pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy to fuel divisions between the public and revolutionary forces, across ethnic lines, and between separate resistance factions.

On the political front, the Tatmadaw has recently consolidated its international standing, most notably after holding a contested general election earlier this year. The election was widely dismissed by UN experts and Western governments as neither free nor fair, with all major opposition candidates barred from running, but it allowed junta leader Min Aung Hlaing – the senior general who led the 2021 coup – to be sworn in as president earlier this month, adding a veneer of democratic legitimacy to his authoritarian rule. China, which publicly supported the election, was quick to congratulate Min Aung Hlaing and dispatched its foreign minister for an in-person meeting just days after his inauguration. The election also freed up thousands of troops who had been deployed to provide poll security, allowing the Tatmadaw to reallocate those forces to front-line combat operations, Michaels noted.

One of Min Aung Hlaing’s first acts as president was to announce a new offer of peace talks to all armed resistance groups, including both EAOs and PDFs, though the NUG was deliberately excluded from the invitation. The NUG immediately rejected the offer, denouncing it as a tactic to prolong military rule. The junta’s offer, published in the state-run *Global New Light of Myanmar*, set a July 31 deadline for groups to join talks, and included a caveat that resistance groups may not bring “unrealistic demands” to the negotiating table. No details were provided on consequences for groups that refuse the invitation, and the junta did not respond to requests for comment from AP.

Even as it extends the offer of talks, the Tatmadaw has continued to press offensive operations across multiple fronts. It is currently conducting a large-scale assault in Sagaing Region aimed at retaking the northern city of Indaw, which fell to PDF forces backed by the Kachin Independence Army last year. At the same time, the military remains on the defensive in eastern Myanmar, where the Karen National Liberation Army is advancing on a key junta stronghold near the Thai border.

Analysts say Min Aung Hlaing’s peace offer is likely an attempt to revive the decade-old Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, which brought relative calm to parts of Myanmar by signing on roughly half of the country’s EAOs. For now, however, incremental, localized ceasefires appear to be the junta’s immediate goal. “In the short term if you can agree to ceasefires with some groups, then you can redirect your resources toward other groups that are either unwilling to agree to a ceasefire or that the Tatmadaw is unwilling to agree to a ceasefire with,” Michaels explained. “The Tatmadaw can always accept some degree of opposition and, in fact needs some level of active armed resistance to justify its rule and justify its behavior. But the current level of widespread armed resistance across the country is not tenable for the junta.”

On Wednesday, a groundbreaking international conference focused on phasing out fossil fuels drew to a close in the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia, marking a historic shift in global climate policy conversations. For the first time in three decades of formal climate negotiations, delegates from 56 countries gathered to directly address the question of how to wind down oil, gas, and coal production — the primary driver of anthropogenic global warming — rather than debating whether such a transition is necessary. What began as an exploratory dialogue has laid the foundation for ongoing global cooperation, with financing for developing nations emerging as the most pressing obstacle to a just, widespread transition.

The gathering brought together a diverse cross-section of stakeholders beyond national government negotiators, including climate advocates, financial experts, Indigenous community leaders, youth representatives, and subnational authorities. Unlike formal United Nations climate conferences (known as COPs), which are often rigid and marked by pre-negotiated positional stances, participants described the Santa Marta meeting as having an unusually open, collaborative atmosphere. Former Irish President Mary Robinson, a leading voice for climate justice, noted that the tone of dialogue set this gathering apart from traditional UN talks, with participants engaging in more human, cooperative problem-solving rather than sticking to inflexible official lines.

Prior global climate negotiations have long centered on cutting end-use emissions rather than targeting the root of the climate crisis: fossil fuel extraction and production itself. This landmark meeting reoriented the conversation to tackle the full scope of the transition, including coordination between fossil fuel producing and consuming nations, support for workers shifting out of fossil fuel sectors, and managing the broader economic impacts of winding down production. While the conference did not produce legally binding commitments, it delivered tangible initial outcomes: agreements for ongoing cross-country collaboration, the establishment of dedicated working groups focused on financing and just labor transitions, and renewed momentum for future global negotiations to coordinate a coordinated fossil fuel phaseout.

Discussions repeatedly centered on financing as the single most urgent barrier to progress. Many low- and middle-income nations in the Global South face unsustainable debt burdens, high global borrowing costs, and limited access to affordable capital for renewable energy development, even as renewables have become cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world. Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, explained that many developing countries are pushed to expand new fossil fuel projects solely to service their existing debt, trapping them in a cycle of dependency that is incompatible with climate action. Participants also highlighted how restrictive domestic fiscal policies and structural inequities in the global financial system slow transition progress, noting that traditional macroeconomic responses to inflation can inadvertently hamper investment in the clean energy transition. Ana Toni, CEO of the upcoming COP30 hosted by Brazil, called for greater engagement from finance ministers to develop targeted solutions to the fiscal challenges of the transition.

The conference also forged a new, inclusive alliance that brings together major economies and the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, a dynamic that participants said has been missing from many prior climate efforts. While the U.S. federal government was not invited — organizers framed the gathering as a space for nations already aligned on the goal of phasing out fossil fuels — a senior official from California attended as an independent observer, noting that clear policy and regulatory certainty is critical to unlocking private sector investment for the transition.

Indigenous participants raised important questions about inclusive decision-making, noting that Indigenous communities have long been frontline stewards of forest ecosystems that absorb carbon, but their knowledge and voices are often sidelined in global climate processes. Patricia Suárez, an adviser to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, emphasized that any just transition must center Indigenous territorial rights and acknowledge the critical role these communities play in addressing the climate crisis, while calling for meaningful representation in all upcoming transition initiatives.

In a moment that drew resounding applause from delegates, attendees announced that the next fossil fuel transition conference will be co-hosted by Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise, and Ireland. The pairing of a climate-vulnerable developing state and a wealthy developed European nation reflects a deliberate effort to bridge global divides in perspective and responsibility for the transition. Tuvalu’s Minister of Home Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Maina Vakafua Talia noted that hosting the conference will highlight the lived, on-the-ground impacts of fossil fuel emissions, and that future talks will prioritize delivering concrete, actionable outcomes rather than non-binding statements. “If we are to address the climate change issue, we have to address the root cause, and the root cause is the fossil fuel industry,” Talia said, adding that delegates are eager to put concrete solutions and actionable steps on the table at the next gathering.

Senior policy observers noted that the conference signals a growing global appetite for moving beyond broad climate pledges to targeted, practical action on the core driver of climate change. “Santa Marta has delivered something valuable: a genuine demonstration that climate action remains a priority, and real appetite for specific solutions,” said Vance Culbert, senior policy adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, adding that the initiative will help give the global fossil fuel transition a more coherent, powerful foundation.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – In a ruling that brings renewed closure to survivors and grieving families of the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, New Zealand’s Court of Appeal has dismissed white supremacist Brenton Tarrant’s bid to reverse his guilty pleas on charges of terrorism, murder, and attempted murder.

Tarrant, a 35-year-old Australian national, carried out one of the worst mass shootings in New Zealand’s modern history in March 2019. Targeting two Christchurch mosques during Friday prayers, he opened fire with semiautomatic weapons, killing 51 Muslim worshippers and wounding dozens more. He streamed the attack live online and published a lengthy manifesto detailing his violent white supremacist ideology under his real name.

In March 2020, Tarrant entered guilty pleas to all charges against him, a decision that spared the nation the trauma of a prolonged high-profile trial that many feared would give the extremist a platform to amplify his hateful rhetoric. On Thursday, a three-judge panel rejected Tarrant’s latest claim that harsh prison conditions had forced him to enter the guilty pleas against his will, noting first that the appeal was filed a staggering 505 days after the statutory deadline.

During a five-day hearing held in February, Tarrant, who has since dismissed his original legal team, also argued that his guilty pleas were the product of “irrationality” caused by poor mental health, claiming he had temporarily abandoned his racist views at the time of the plea deal. The three judges on the panel uniformly rejected this argument, finding Tarrant’s accounts of mental illness to be inconsistent and unsupported by evidence from prison staff, independent mental health professionals, and his former legal representatives.

In their written ruling, the judges emphasized: “He was not suffering from a mental impairment or any other form of mental incapacity which rendered him unable to voluntarily change his pleas to guilty. He endeavoured to mislead us about his state of mind in a weak attempt to advance an appeal in circumstances where all other evidence demonstrated that he made an informed and totally rational decision to plead guilty.”

The ruling also revealed an unusual procedural twist: shortly after Tarrant presented his case at the February hearing, he attempted to abandon the appeal himself. Judges rejected that request, noting that the case carried profound public importance and required a final, formal resolution. Court documents suggest Tarrant made the move to drop the appeal after recognizing his argument was unlikely to succeed, but New Zealand law does not require courts to allow appellants to withdraw a pending appeal once proceedings are underway.

Tarrant is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at Auckland Prison, a sentence handed down in August 2020. The Court of Appeal did grant Tarrant’s request to abandon a separate planned appeal of his life sentence, which had been scheduled for hearing in 2026.

Court records confirm that Tarrant relocated to New Zealand from Australia in 2017, already planning the mass attack. He spent nearly two years accumulating weapons and conducting surveillance on the target mosques before carrying out the shooting. At the time of his guilty plea, he acknowledged the overwhelming weight of evidence against him, including the self-filmed livestream of his attack and his own publicly released manifesto laying out his racist motivations. Thursday’s ruling closes another chapter in the aftermath of the attack, preventing a retrial that would have re-traumatized victims and their families.

As the protracted US-Israeli military campaign against Iran shows no immediate sign of de-escalation, former US President Donald Trump rejected a landmark Iranian peace initiative on Wednesday that aimed to lift reciprocal blockades of the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz and postpone divisive nuclear negotiations to a future date.

Multiple independent US media outlets have confirmed that the White House is actively considering extending its naval blockade of Iranian ports and oil infrastructure for multiple months, a plan that was outlined directly to senior US oil industry executives during a closed-door meeting with Trump. The news of the extended blockade triggered immediate volatility in global energy markets, a key barometer of geopolitical risk in the Middle East. Brent Crude, the global benchmark for international oil trade, jumped 7.5% by mid-day Wednesday to settle at $107.49 per barrel.

On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump doubled down on his hardline stance toward Tehran, writing, “Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!” The post was paired with a doctored image showing Trump carrying a rifle against a backdrop of explosions destroying a desert fortress, overlaid with the slogan: “No more Mr. Nice Guy!”

According to US media reports, Trump’s closed-door talks with oil executives centered on two core goals: maintaining pressure on Iran via the naval blockade, and mitigating the economic fallout of higher energy prices for American consumers. Since the start of hostilities, average US retail gasoline prices have climbed roughly 35%, a smaller increase than what consumers have seen in Europe and Asia, but still a significant burden for household budgets. On Wednesday, the American Automobile Association reported the current national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline stands at $4.23.

In an interview with Axios News published Wednesday, Trump framed the blockade as a more effective tactic than sustained aerial bombardment. “The blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing. They are choking like a stuffed pig. And it is going to be worse for them. They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters. The former president insisted the blockade will only be lifted once a comprehensive nuclear agreement is reached — a negotiation process he acknowledged could stretch on for months, if not years.

While Trump declined to confirm upcoming military action during the Axios interview, unnamed senior defense officials have disclosed that US Central Command is drafting contingency plans for a series of “short and powerful” targeted strikes against Iranian assets to break the current diplomatic deadlock. The planning follows a major disruption to diplomatic efforts last week, when Trump canceled a planned trip by his negotiation envoys to mediating Pakistan just after Iran’s foreign minister had already arrived in the country, leaving talks completely in limbo.

A three-week-old ceasefire between US and Iranian forces has largely held across the theater of operations up to this point, giving a much-needed reprieve to Tehran, which suffered heavy damage from weeks of coordinated US and Israeli airstrikes. At the same time, US regional allies in the Persian Gulf have faced thousands of retaliatory ballistic missile and drone strikes from Iranian-aligned forces. More than 3,000 Iranian civilians and combatants have been killed in the 40 days of bombardment that preceded the ceasefire.

After the initial ceasefire took hold, Trump replaced large-scale airstrikes with the naval blockade, a move he says responds to Iran’s seizure of partial control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil shipments pass. Tehran has selectively allowed commercial vessels to transit the waterway amid the ongoing standoff. “They want to settle. They don’t want me to keep the blockade,” Trump told Axios. He added that the blockade has crippled Iran’s oil export sector, claiming that Iranian tankers and domestic oil infrastructure “are getting close to exploding” from backed-up crude supplies.

On Wednesday, Iran’s state-run Press TV released a statement from an unnamed senior security source pushing back on Trump’s hardline position. The source noted that Iran’s military has shown deliberate restraint in recent weeks “intended to give diplomacy a chance”. The ceasefire, the source explained, was designed to give Trump “an opportunity to pull the United States out of the current quagmire it finds itself in”, but warned that Washington will face “practical and unprecedented action” from Iran if it refuses to end its naval blockade.

More than a year after stepping back from his role at the International Criminal Court (ICC) amid a United Nations investigation into sexual misconduct claims, Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has spoken publicly for the first time, forcefully asserting his innocence and revealing unprecedented political intimidation from Western leaders over his push to prosecute Israeli officials for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

In a wide-ranging interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan published on Zeteo, Khan laid out details of direct threats from senior Western politicians, corroborating earlier exclusive reporting from Middle East Eye (MEE) that exposed a coordinated campaign to undermine his leadership over the Gaza investigation. The probe into Khan’s conduct was triggered after misconduct allegations emerged last year, and a independent panel of judges appointed by the ICC’s governing Assembly of States Parties (ASP) Bureau already reviewed the UN investigation and concluded no evidence of misconduct or breach of duty had been proven against Khan. Yet despite the panel’s exoneration, Khan has not been allowed to resume his post, after a bloc of mostly Western and European states voted to set aside the judges’ findings and launch their own separate assessment based on the UN report.

Khan told Hasan he was stunned and confused by the decision to keep the case open after he was cleared. “I cooperated with the process, and the process exonerated me. I’m just concerned that…why is it not being closed straight away?” he said. Addressing the sexual misconduct allegations directly, Khan noted that the 137 findings contained in the UN investigation contained zero conclusions that labeled any of his behavior as inappropriate in any form. “So it’s as clear as cut as that,” he emphasized, adding that the ongoing delay is no longer about the original allegations. “What is being proposed is for political state officials to somehow hear more representations to get the result [they want]. It is not acceptable.” The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services’ original report included competing evidence from both the complainant and Khan, and the judges’ panel later confirmed the investigation either failed to reach conclusive factual findings or found it impossible to do so based on available evidence.

The misconduct investigation has unfolded against a backdrop of growing global pressure on Khan and the ICC, sparked by the prosecutor’s move to pursue arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict. Pressure began mounting in early 2024, as Khan finalized plans to apply for warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. To date, Khan, his two deputies, and multiple ICC judges have already been subjected to official US sanctions over the investigation.

Last August, MEE reporting detailed a sprawling intimidation effort that included threats from high-profile politicians, coordinated negative briefings against Khan by close associates, safety concerns triggered by the presence of a Mossad team in The Hague, and pre-planned media leaks of the sexual misconduct allegations. While Khan declined to directly accuse any intelligence service of infiltration, he confirmed that Netanyahu has repeatedly worked to weaponize the allegations against him. “Netanyahu has clearly amplified and has sought to instrumentalise, at the very least, these allegations,” he said, adding that both Russian foreign intelligence and Israeli intelligence have carried out close surveillance of his activities.

When asked about MEE’s June 2024 exclusive report of a threat from then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that the UK would withdraw from the ICC and cut funding if the court moved forward with arrest warrants for Israeli officials, Khan confirmed the account was accurate. The April 23, 2024, phone call marked a clear moment of public pressure from one of the ICC’s founding member states. “Yes, it’s been reported, and it’s true,” he said. “I was sad. I wasn’t angry, I was sad. I’m not sure if it was [the] UK government, it was a very senior state official representing the UK government.” When pressed to confirm the caller was Cameron – a former British prime minister and current Conservative peer – Khan affirmed it was. Describing the conversation as difficult, he noted Cameron appeared visibly upset during the call. Khan struck a more optimistic note about the new British Labour government, saying Attorney General Richard Hermer has reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to respecting international law, a shift from the previous administration’s stance. As a British national and the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Khan emphasized the UK’s special responsibility as a UN Security Council permanent member: “If it stands for anything, it must stand for international law, and rules and complying and doing the right thing. And if the UK does the right thing, it’ll be good for the UK, and it’ll be good for the international community. And if we don’t, it’ll be the kiss of death for the standing of this great country.” Cameron has not responded to requests for comment on the call, and the British government has repeatedly declined to address the issue despite repeated questions from Labour MPs.

Khan also confirmed remarks first reported by MEE from a May 2024 conference call with US Senator Lindsey Graham, in which Graham claimed the ICC was only intended to prosecute African leaders and figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin, not Israeli or American officials. Graham’s comment echoed the dismissive attitude many Western leaders have taken toward the Gaza investigation, Khan argued.

The prosecutor also pushed back against claims that he advanced the arrest warrants to distract public attention from the misconduct allegations against him, calling the claim “baloney” in an American turn of phrase. He laid out a clear timeline to prove the warrants were planned long before the allegations became public: he traveled to the region in late 2023, visiting Israel, Palestinian communities, and Rafah, and publicly stated that all parties would be held accountable for violations. As early as March 2024 – weeks before the allegations emerged – he had already briefed senior US officials that he planned to file arrest warrant applications for the Palestine situation by the end of April, confirming the investigation’s timeline was never linked to the misconduct claims.

Today, Khan’s future at the ICC remains uncertain. The ASP Bureau is scheduled to deliver a final ruling on the allegations in early June, and Khan is set to deliver a high-profile public address at the Oxford Union next Tuesday, in what will be one of his first major public appearances since stepping back from his post.