KARIM Khan's job as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requires a scrupulous examination of evidence to bring cases against alleged perpetrators of the world's worst crimes.
Now the 54-year-old British lawyer faces a probe into allegations of misconduct, reportedly by a member of his office. He denies the accusations.
When Khan was sworn in as chief prosecutor of the ICC, he said the court should be judged by its acts — "the proof of the pudding should be in the eating".
And by seeking arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, Khan has shown he is not afraid to take on the world's most controversial cases.
The application followed an arrest warrant issued last year for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which promptly slapped arrest warrants on Khan himself.
But Khan has faced controversy throughout a career that has included 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 Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam.
Asked about "crossing the floor" — working as both prosecutor and defence — Khan told specialist publication OpinioJuris that it helps lawyers stay "grounded".
It also prevents "corrosive traits such as thinking that defence counsel is the devil incarnate or that as a prosecutor you are doing 'God's work'," he said.
Criticised initially for not acting fast enough to prevent atrocities in Gaza, Khan touched off a firestorm when applying for arrest warrants over the war.
Netanyahu called it a "moral outrage of historic proportions". For United States President Joe Biden, it was "outrageous".
Even before Khan's application, senior US Republicans penned a letter threatening to bar him and his family from the US, ending ominously "you have been warned".
But Khan told CNN: "This is not a witch hunt. This is not some kind of emotional reaction to noise... It's a forensic process that is expected of us as international prosecutors."
Born in Scotland, Khan was educated at the private Silcoates School in northern England, before studying undergraduate law at King's College, London.
His father was Pakistani, his mother British.
Called to the bar in 1992, he went on to cut his teeth in international law at the former Yugoslav and Rwandan war crimes courts from 1997 to 2000.
He later represented survivors and relatives of victims of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia at its United Nations-backed court in the late 2000s.
His other roles have included a stint at The Hague-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, set up to bring to justice the killers of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. More recently, he headed the UN special probe into Islamic State group crimes and called for trials like those at Nuremberg of Nazi leaders.
Initially absent from a list of candidates for the top ICC prosecutor job, Khan was added reportedly at the insistence of the Kenyan government.
The ICC selection panel described him as a "charismatic and articulate communicator who is well aware of his achievements".
"I did apply because I thought I could do the role. If the Search Committee thought this was arrogance, then I'm guilty as charged," Khan said.
In his speeches, he is forthright with a strong command of oratory, sprinkled with dashes of British humour.
"From what I've observed, Karim Khan seems like a no-nonsense lawyer, which I quite respect," Melanie O'Brien, visiting professor in international law at the University of Minnesota, told AFP.
An ICC prosecutor "has to have a certain fortitude because you know that you are going to be up against people who don't agree with you and don't agree with the court," she said.
The writers are from AFP