Reuters: The ICC chief prosecutor fired over sexual harassment allegations

The member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have voted to dismiss Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor who issued the arrest warrants for Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Reuters reports this, citing two diplomatic sources.

The secret ballot was held on July 24 at the UN headquarters in New York. Khan was not present at the meeting because he was banned from entering the United States after the Donald Trump administration imposed sanctions against him.

According to Reuters sources, 82 of the 125 member states of the ICC voted to dismiss Khan. The agency did not say who voted in favor. This was the first time a chief prosecutor has been removed from office.

The reason for the dismissal of the ICC prosecutor was allegations of harassment — Khan denies them.

Charges against Karim Khan

The accusations of sexual harassment against Karim Khan became known in late October 2024. Initially, information about this appeared in the anonymous X-account ICC Leaks, and later The Guardian and the Associated Press wrote about it.

ICC has an internal inspection system, the so-called Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM), which publishes a report every year. The 2024 report says that unnamed court employees reported that a senior official had harassed their colleague. The media claims that this is Khan.

The woman who reported the harassment did not want the UN to launch an investigation, but later asked the ICC Assembly of States Parties to examine the situation. In May 2025, The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of her testimony to the UN.

The woman, who has not been named, worked on the ISS for six years before joining Khanʼs team in 2023. She claims that his courtship began shortly after that, during a work trip to London in March 2023.

According to her testimony, Khan repeatedly forced her to have sex without consent. She eventually confessed to Khan that she was having suicidal thoughts, after which he left her alone for a few weeks, but then started harassing her again. She also stated that Khan never used a condom.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Khan was questioned by UN investigators in the case on May 8 and 9. Khan was placed on administrative leave in May 2025 while the investigation continued. He was removed from his post in June 2026.

There is another scandal associated with Khan: in August 2025, he recused himself from the investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in Venezuela — all because his daughter-in-law Venkateswari Alajendra is an international criminal lawyer and works on the defense team of the countryʼs President Nicolas Maduro.

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