Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised

Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised

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Sondos Asem
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Tue, 07/21/2026 - 17:41

ICC states set to vote on Karim Khan’s removal over misconduct claims

Chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan poses for a picture at the ICC headquarters in The Hague on 27 May 2022 (John Thys/AFP)

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Member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) are set to gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday for a controversial vote which could see the court's chief prosecutor Karim Khan dismissed from his job over alleged misconduct claims.

It will be the first time in the ICC's 24-year history that member states have been asked to decide whether to remove a sitting chief prosecutor from office. 

The Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the court’s governing body that is made up of its 125 members, will vote by secret ballot requiring an absolute majority of 63 states to remove the prosecutor. 

Khan’s lawyers said they have been denied accreditation to attend Friday’s session and to mount a defence prior to the vote. They added that the president of the ASP “has closed every formal channel” through which they can address the assembly, and has asked all state parties not to meet with the legal team. 

"The right under the rules to address you on the substantive decision of misconduct has been flatly denied to us," Khan’s lawyers, Tayab Ali and Sareta Ashraph, wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

“We know of no court or tribunal in any proper and fair legal system that bars a person facing the gravest professional sanction from being heard,” they added.

'We know of no court or tribunal in any proper and fair legal system that bars a person facing the gravest professional sanction from being heard'

- Karim Khan's lawyers

The vote result is expected to be announced to the public by the end of the day. 

Member states are set to vote on the finding by the ASP bureau last month that Khan "engaged in a sexual relationship" with the complainant, which was considered to be inappropriate given the “power imbalance” between them. 

However, the bureau’s decision of 8 June appears to reframe the nature of Khan’s alleged sexual misconduct.

Khan has denied the existence of any sexual relationship, while the complainant's account centred on allegations of non-consensual conduct.

In an interview with CNN last week, which was her first public appearance in connection with the case, the complainant, a member of Khan’s office staff who CNN identified as “Sarah”, stood by the allegation of non-consensual sexual conduct. 

These allegations, details of which had previously been leaked to the media, were the main focus of a lengthy external investigation conducted by the United Nations’ Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

The investigation also looked into three allegations of retaliation by Khan against members of his office.

The OIOS report was then reviewed by a three-judge panel which concluded it had failed to establish any “misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".

The bureau has not made a finding of misconduct against Khan related to any of the retaliation allegations.

Friday's vote comes shortly following extraordinary threats by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Washington would "dismantle the ICC - brick by brick, if necessary," while most of the court’s judges and prosecutors, including Khan, have been sanctioned by the US over their work on the Palestine and Afghanistan war crimes investigations. 

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The disciplinary process against Khan emerged in the wake of his decision to seek arrest warrants over two years ago for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders, over alleged war crimes committed during the war in Gaza since October 2023.

The vote also comes amid continuing questions and criticism about the ASP Bureau's handling of the investigation, particularly over concerns that the process has been “politicised” after the opinion of the judges’ panel, which unanimously found that no wrongdoing had been established, was disregarded by bureau member states.

More than 160 Palestinian civil society organisations and rights groups signed a statement last week arguing that the disciplinary process "has been reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties".

On Saturday, MEE reported comments by Josep Borrell, the former EU foreign policy chief, who accused the ASP of holding a "political vote" to remove Khan instead of upholding judicial findings that cleared him of wrongdoing.

Borrell argued that the Khan case is "part of a larger offensive against the ICC", citing the US sanctions and threats targeting Khan and other officials following his decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders in May 2024.

How did we get there?

The complaint against Khan included allegations of sexual assault on a number of occasions, including on overseas missions and at The Hague, where the court is based. According to the complaint, the alleged abuse began in March 2023 and continued for nearly a year.

The allegations were first revealed to Khan in person by members of his team on 2 May 2024.

An internal investigation by the ICC’s own investigative body, the Internal Oversight Mechanism (IOM), was opened and closed in the following week, as the complainant refused to cooperate.

Later in the same month, Khan officially sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and three Hamas officials.

A number of media reports at the time suggested that Khan sought arrest warrants on 20 May that year to win support in the context of allegations against him.

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But, according to an MEE investigation, the prosecutor’s decision to apply for warrants was made six weeks before the allegations were made, and the application for the warrants was submitted only after the first internal investigation into the harassment accusations had been opened and closed.

Allegations against Khan resurfaced on social media and in the media in October 2024.

A second IOM investigation was opened and closed in November, but the complainant again refused to cooperate, prompting the ASP to commission an outsourced investigation by the OIOS.

For more than a year, UN investigators were tasked with gathering and weighing evidence against Khan to enable the panel of judges appointed by the bureau to provide authoritative legal advice on whether the prosecutor had committed misconduct, applying the standard of proof "beyond reasonable doubt".

On 11 December, they submitted their 150-page report and 5,000 pages of evidence to the panel. The judges then spent nearly three months examining the OIOS probe before reaching their conclusion in March.

In a report seen by MEE, the panel concluded unanimously that the facts presented in the UN investigation "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".

But a few weeks after the judges' panel report, a majority of bureau members backed a motion to disregard it, suggesting that Khan may have committed misconduct. The vote prompted concerns that the process could be politicised.

After giving Khan and the complainants a final opportunity to make further submissions, the bureau then moved to formally suspend him two months later and referred the matter to the ASP.

Lowering threshold for removal

The removal vote is based on a process that departs from the court’s own rules.

MEE reported this month that the ASP bureau has changed the voting process to lower the threshold for Khan’s removal, from a two-stage vote - in which members would vote separately on whether Khan had committed misconduct and whether he should be removed from his job - to a single vote.

Under the new process, member states are asked to cast their votes on a single motion approving both the bureau's finding of serious misconduct against Khan and the prosecutor's dismissal, according to multiple diplomatic sources.

Khan’s lawyers have denounced the change of rules as unfair.

"Altering the rules of a named individual's case partway through, to his disadvantage and without notice to him, raises the most serious questions of lawfulness and of basic fairness, and we would say so whoever the individual concerned happened to be," they told MEE.

What next?

In the event of a majority vote approving the bureau’s recommendation, the removal decision will take immediate effect, and elections for a new prosecutor would follow.

Khan told MEE in May that he would appeal the removal before the administrative tribunal of the International Labour Organization, the body to which ICC staff may appeal employment decisions.

Khan, a British barrister, was elected as chief prosecutor by the ASP in February 2021. He is the third person to hold that position since the court’s founding in 2002.

In addition to seeking warrants for Israeli leaders, his office has sought arrest warrants for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte, Myanmar’s junta leaders, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan. 

His future, and that of the court, now hangs in the balance.

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