Chief prosecutor of International Criminal Court, Karim Khan is out. The International Criminal Court’s governing body voted Friday to strip the British barrister of his role as chief prosecutor, ending a saga that started two years ago with sexual abuse allegations from a former staffer. It’s the first time anything like this has happened at the court, per The Guardian.
The vote itself happened behind closed doors at UN headquarters in New York. Of the court’s 125 member states, 82 backed removing Khan. Thirteen pushed back and voted no. Eleven sat it out and abstained.
What He’s Accused Of
A woman who worked under Khan at the ICC brought the allegations. She says he pressured her into sexual contact repeatedly, over an extended stretch of time, in ways that were coercive and without her consent.
Khan hasn’t budged on his denials. Not once. His lawyers say the whole disciplinary process was stacked against him from the start, and after Friday’s vote they made clear he isn’t done fighting. Expect legal challenges questioning whether the removal was even lawful.
Here is What You Need to Know
Before any of this, Khan was arguably the most consequential prosecutor the ICC has ever had. Elected in 2021 to a nine year term, he ran point on the court’s efforts to investigate and prosecute war crimes and atrocities worldwide.
Two decisions in particular put him on the map: going after arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and, later, Benjamin Netanyahu. Both moves dragged the ICC into confrontations with two of the world’s most powerful governments, and both drew intense global attention to a court that often struggles for relevance.
Those warrants still stand, by the way. Judges issued them independently, so Khan’s ouster changes nothing there. But the prosecution office he ran, some 400 people, has taken a beating over the course of this scandal.
How We Got Here
The suspension came first. Last month, the executive committee found Khan had committed serious misconduct and suspended him on the spot, kicking the final call over to member states.
Friday’s meeting drew on three separate sources of evidence: the executive committee’s own findings, a report from a UN watchdog that investigated the claims, and a legal review carried out by a panel of judges.
The Conspiracy Angle That Didn’t Hold Up
There’s been a persistent theory floating around Khan’s camp, one suggesting the allegations were manufactured to punish him for going after Netanyahu and his defense minister back in 2024. The timing, they argued, was suspicious.
The governing body looked into it and found nothing. Its report states plainly that no evidence backs the idea that the accuser was working on behalf of outside parties, intelligence agencies included.
The woman at the center of it all addressed this herself last week, sitting down with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Her message was simple: she filed the complaint because of what was done to her, full stop, not because someone put her up to it.