Fiji lawyer now top global prosecutor

Nazhat Shameem Khan prosecutes global war crimes—while Fiji’s coup ghosts remain politely unexamined

If Fiji ever gets a real truth-and-reconciliation process for its coups, one name will top every witness list: Nazhat Shameem Khan.

Born in Fiji 65 years ago, she quietly furnished the legal fig-leaf for Voreqe Bainimarama’s 2006 power grab—and she knows more about Fiji’s tangled truths than most anyone alive. But thanks to constitutional immunity that all involved still have, don’t count on her ever testifying.

Now Shameem Khan has slipped into an even more powerful perch: co-chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. She’s filling the seat left by Karim Khan (no relation), who bowed out amid sexual-harassment allegations. It’d be rich if she cared about Fiji’s domestic reconciliation—yet here she is, thrust into her homeland’s latest geopolitical theater. While she probes alleged Israeli war crimes, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s government is suing to gag the International Court of Justice (ICJ), brokering a Jerusalem embassy opening, and deploying Fijian peacekeepers to the Middle East. Cue the diplomatic contortions.

Nazhat Shameem Khan. UN photo