Key Takeaways: The ICC's oversight body found credible evidence that chief prosecutor Karim Khan committed serious sexual misconduct with a female aide. Member states will vote July 24 on whether to remove him from office. The crisis compounds US sanctions pressure on the war crimes court.
The International Criminal Court will vote July 24 on whether to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan after an oversight body found sexual assault allegations against him credible.
The ICC's oversight body found that Khan committed serious misconduct by coercing a female aide into sex on multiple occasions, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, setting up a removal vote that threatens to deepen the court's worst crisis in its 24-year history.
"The evidence established beyond reasonable doubt that the prosecutor engaged in a sexual relationship with his direct subordinate," the oversight body's report states. "In the context of that power imbalance, a sexual relationship could never be appropriate."
The aide told UN investigators that Khan coerced her into sex at his residence, on trips abroad and in his ICC office over several months. Her testimony "was given candidly, unhesitatingly and with details that rendered her experiences believable," the report said. Khan, 56, has consistently denied any sexual misconduct. His lawyers called the oversight body's decision "unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence."
Khan's removal would leave the world's leading war crimes court without its most prominent figure at a time when it faces US sanctions over arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The 125 member states will vote by secret ballot at UN headquarters in New York, with the outcome expected to pit most members against a smaller group of mostly African nations that have backed Khan.
The allegations first emerged in 2024, weeks before Khan announced he would seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the conduct of the war in Gaza. Khan told a colleague he believed the allegations were part of an Israeli intelligence operation against him, people familiar with the discussions said — a claim his lawyers denied. The oversight body's report found no evidence the aide was pressured to make the allegations and said she "has made no personal or professional gain from having made the allegations."
Britain's Bar Standards Board on Friday imposed its own interim suspension on Khan, effective immediately, to be reviewed by a panel within four weeks. The ICC had already suspended him June 8 after the 18-month UN investigation found a "factual basis" for the allegations. Khan has been on voluntary leave since May 2025, with his two deputies assuming his duties.
The vote comes as the ICC faces unprecedented external pressure. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on 11 ICC judges and prosecutors, including Khan, over the court's arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and a past probe into US troops in Afghanistan. Washington has threatened additional sanctions unless the court pledges not to prosecute US officials. The last time the ICC faced comparable US hostility was in 2020, when the Trump administration sanctioned then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda over the Afghanistan investigation — sanctions that were later lifted by the Biden administration.
Khan led the most consequential period in the ICC's history, seeking arrest warrants for Putin in 2023 over the war in Ukraine and for Hamas leaders as well as Netanyahu and Gallant after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. His removal would not directly affect those warrants, which remain in place unless ICC appeals judges quash them following challenges filed by Israel. The July 24 vote will determine not only Khan's fate but also the court's ability to function under dual pressures from internal scandal and external sanctions — a combination that has no precedent in the ICC's history.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
