Putin could see the inside of a jail cell

it was the first proper test of whether or not the icc's arrest warrant for Putin is going to you know eventually result in anything you know there's a big question will he ever actually uh see a courtroom let alone the inside of a jail and KH was kind of optimistic and he he he he talked in the past about his experience during the Yugoslav tribunal and how people at the time would laugh about these various um Warlords basically being the idea that they would ever see come to the hag and he said well they did come to the he so you know you never know and there is he's he was basically optimistic you can read more in the times today about the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court who says Britain is rediscovering its moral compass under secure starmer Karim Khan has been defending his decision to seek an arrest warrant for Benjamin net Netanyahu the prime minister of Israel the new UK government has dropped a legal challenge to the warrant George grills is defense and political correspondent for the Times morning George morning really interesting to hear from Karim Khan I think first of all let's talk about the arrest warrant that he sort of pursues and is in pursuit of for Benjamin Netanyahu just remind us what happened why he did that when he did that that's right so earlier this year um Karen KH so he's Chief prosecutor of the OC he applied for an arrest warrant basically for war crimes to bring Benjamin Netanyahu as well as yav Gant the Israeli defense minister and three Hamas leaders um to to court um and that obviously provoked a huge amount of anger in Israel Netanyahu compared him to you know the Nazi judges of the 1930s who were depriving Jews of their freedom in the run up to the Holocaust so it was a quite you know emotional time and in terms of the kind of political response to that uh you know he says that he was being pressured by world leaders to to step away from this yeah he says that you know there were people basically saying that politically particularly given the the fact that the war is ongoing maybe it was best for him to delay to wait until after the conflict had ended um and that people were basically yeah having a quiet word cajoling him to try and soften his position and not presum Netanyahu basically because they thought it underlined the kind of diplomatic picture and what then specifically of the UK response because it has changed uh from rishy sunak to secure starmer so the UK played a crucial role in this um the UK filed an application basically questioning whether or not the ICC had jurisdiction over Israeli citizens so in effect what they were doing was shielding Netanyahu at that stage from prosecution this is under the conservative government then when there was an election uh the uh the government under K sta dropped that and basically abanded that position and basically gave the thumbs up for the IC to go ahead that's specifically important because if you think the US is the main Ally of Israel usually on the international stage well the US is not a signat of The Intern AAL criminal court so it fell to the UK to step into that role that's really interesting and therefore we come to I suppose his own perception then of this well now fairly new uh labor government and Karim Khan seemingly welcoming the government's approach talk to us a little bit more about how he how he speaks of secur starmer yeah this was in BBC interview that he did this week where he was extremely warm about the new government and he said there was a difference of tone and substance in relation to international law from the new government but then he kind of went further and talked about the fact that he was British himself comes from Yorkshire and you know what what he welcomed in particular was the quest to have a moral compass um he was kind of praising the government for for a series of decisions it seemed uh that he saw as the kind of striving to be something better and he said that was the best uh version of the UK he's quite interesting on uh President Putin as well so so Putin was visiting Mongolia um uh excuse me to Alan Bor and Mongolia is a member of the ICC and so in theory which should have been obliged to detain him but but did not and so that caused some controversy what's his te on that yeah it was the first proper test of whether or not the icc's arrest warrant for Putin is going to you know eventually result in anything you know there's a big question will he ever actually uh see a courtroom let alone the inside of a jail and KH was kind of optimistic and he he he he talked aled in the past about his experience during the Yugoslav tribunal and how people at the time would laugh about these various um Warlords basically being the idea that they would ever come to the heg and he said well they didn't come to the heg so you know you never know and there is he's he was basically optimistic or but you know he kind of has to be that's he's the chief prosecutor and it doesn't serve much if you lose hope in that Ro yeah I suppose that's a fair point H George thank you very much really good speak to you this morning uh George grills defense and political correspondent for the Times uh you can read about Karim KH uh who did provoke quite a lot of anger in Israel particularly but you know pressure from around the world after issuing that arrest warrant for uh Benjamin Netanyahu but something of a warm welcome I think for Labor's approach uh for more detail as George has reported here and in the times for you go to the times.com e e e e e