The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan has been removed from his post amid allegations of harassment. He was the one who issued the arrest warrants for Putin and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is stated on the ICC website.
The decision was made by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The case against Khan was referred to a special session of the courtʼs member states for consideration.
Khanʼs lawyers believe that this decision is illegal, procedurally unfair, and not supported by evidence, writes Reuters.
What is Karim Khan accused of?
The sexual harassment allegations 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.
The 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 ICC 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 several weeks, but then began to harass 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 himself denies the allegations. He asked the head of the NMM to investigate the allegations and promised to cooperate.
In May 2025, Khan went on administrative leave pending the investigation.
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, international criminal lawyer Venkateswari Alagendra, works on the defense team of the countryʼs President Nicolas Maduro.
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