We are delving into the International Criminal Court (ICC) and how it operates in a week full of rumours of possible arrest warrants in the Palestine Situation, as the court calls the investigation into possible atrocity crimes by Palestinian nationals or committed by Israelis on the Palestinian territories.

For a Reuters story Steph was working on she asked comment from the ICC Office of the Prosecutor – or OTP as we love our acronyms – and got offered an interview with deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan. For this Justice Update we’ll play you bits of the interview and dissect her comments with ICC observer and friend of the pod Mark Kersten.

Mark is assistant professor at the university of the Fraser Valley Canada and regular working with the Wayamo Foundation across Africa engaging with lawyers and activists, and he runs the super informative Justice In Conflict blog. 

The deputy prosecutor talks us through the way the OTP is working now and how their new approach has lead to “an unprecedented number of arrest warrants” that have been applied for – but we are not yet seeing.

For ICC nostalgics like Mark and Steph, here is a link to the 2020 Preliminary Examination report, we wax lyrical about and for comparison the current format, the OTP’s 2023 annual report.