The Karim Khan saga: a timeline

The Karim Khan saga: a timeline

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Sondos Asem
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Thu, 07/23/2026 - 14:09

How allegations against the ICC’s chief prosecutor became entangled with pressure over his pursuit of Israeli officials, culminating in a vote that could reshape the court

Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on 14 March 2025 (AFP/file photo)

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Member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) are due to vote at the United Nations' headquarters in New York on Friday on whether to remove the court's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, from office – a first in the court’s 24-year history. 

The vote caps a saga stretching back more than two years, spanning sexual misconduct allegations Khan has consistently denied, a UN-led investigation, a judicial panel that unanimously cleared him, and a bureau that chose to override that finding and press ahead regardless.

The case has unfolded alongside a separate campaign of pressure on Khan and the court over his pursuit of war crimes warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, from a threat by Britain's then foreign secretary to defund the ICC, to sanctions imposed on Khan and dozens of ICC officials by the Trump administration, to the US secretary of state's public vow to "dismantle" the court.

Khan, a British barrister, is the ICC's third chief prosecutor 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 Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, Myanmar’s junta leaders, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan. 

Middle East Eye has been at the forefront of exclusive coverage of the misconduct case at all stages.

Below is a timeline of how the case unfolded, from early 2024 till the highly controversial 24 July vote.

Palestine investigation, and the pressure campaign begins (2021–2023)

February 2021 Karim Khan is elected ICC chief prosecutor by the Assembly of States Parties (ASP). 

March 2021 Khan's predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, opens the ICC's investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

21 June 2021 Khan takes the oath of office, becoming the third person to hold the post since the court's founding in 2002.

Summer 2022 The woman who later becomes the complainant in the sexual misconduct case alleges a separate senior ICC official behaved inappropriately towards her.

31 August 2022 Khan writes to the ASP president raising her concerns about that other official; external investigators are appointed in October 2022 with her cooperation.

11 December 2023 That separate external investigation concludes there was "no unsatisfactory conduct" by the official concerned.

17 November 2023 Five states (South Africa, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Djibouti) formally refer the Palestine situation to the prosecutor after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza.

December 2023 Khan visits Israel (kibbutzim, the Nova festival site) and meets Palestinian officials including President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. 

Lead-up to the warrants (January–April 2024)

January 2024 Khan convenes an independent, seven-member expert panel to assess whether the legal threshold for arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders had been met. The panel unanimously concludes in March the process was "fair, rigorous and independent" and sufficient material existed to request warrants.

16 March 2024 Khan's legal team concludes it will be in a position to apply for the Israeli and Hamas warrants by the end of April.

21 March 2024 Khan orders a "complementarity" check into whether Israel was investigating the alleged crimes itself; his office concludes it was not.

ICC issues arrest warrants for Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant

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25 March 2024 Khan informs the US administration of his decision and that warrants would be sought by the end of April.

15 April 2024 In London, Khan tells UK Justice Secretary Alex Chalk he will apply for the warrants; he had wanted to brief Foreign Secretary David Cameron directly, but Cameron was abroad.

19 April 2024 A senior US official warns Khan by phone of "disastrous consequences" if he proceeds; Khan says he rejected this, citing Israel's lack of cooperation.

23 April 2024 While Khan is on an official visit to Venezuela, Cameron phones him and says issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant would be "like dropping a hydrogen bomb". Cameron spoke aggressively, told Khan he would "lose the dressing room" and be seen as "losing the plot", and said the UK would "defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute" if warrants were issued. Khan replied that this would mean "the rules-based system would be dead".

In an account of the episode in MEE journalist Peter Oborne's book, Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza, a source close to Cameron said that the call with Khan did take place and was “robust”. But the source said that rather than making a threat, Cameron pointed out that strong voices in the Conservative Party would push for defunding the ICC and withdrawing from the Rome Statute.

24 April 2024 12 Republican US senators (including Marco Rubio) send Khan a letter warning "Target Israel and we will target you." 

25 April 2024 British journalist Douglas Murray writes in the New York Post that Khan will seek warrants within days, before this is public knowledge.

26 April 2024 Netanyahu publicly criticises the ICC on social media, saying: “Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defence.”

28 April 2024 Israel says it will allow Khan to visit Israel and Gaza, an unprecedented offer that delays the warrant applications.

29 April 2024 A colleague of Khan's raises harassment allegations against him in a private conversation.

30 April–1 May 2024 Khan describes meetings with western states and US officials that he characterises as efforts to dissuade him from proceeding.

Warrants filed, allegations surface (May 2024)

2 May 2024 The sexual misconduct/harassment allegations are first put to Khan in person by members of his team, on the same day, per his later ICC submission, that he had been planning to announce the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants. Khan separately meets Dutch counterterrorism officials over a security briefing about suspected Mossad activity in The Hague.

Exclusive: How Karim Khan’s Israel war crimes probe was derailed by threats, leaks and sex claims

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3 May 2024 A colleague of Khan refers the harassment allegations to the ICC's Internal Oversight Mechanism (IOM).

7 May 2024 The IOM's first inquiry closes after the complainant declines to cooperate.

19–20 May 2024 With Israel's promised permission letter for the Gaza visit still not delivered, Khan cancels the trip and, on 20 May, announces he is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. In his public statement he says: "I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this Court must cease immediately."

21 May 2024 David Cameron publicly calls the warrant decision "a mistake", accusing the ICC of drawing a "moral equivalence" between Israeli and Hamas leaders.

10 June 2024 The outgoing Conservative government files a formal objection disputing ICC jurisdiction over Israeli nationals; the incoming Labour government drops the objection the following month, after the July 2024 general election.

Leaks, a second complaint, arrest warrants (October–November 2024)

17 October 2024 An anonymous Twitter account begins circulating details of the harassment allegations against Khan.

19 October 2024 The Mail on Sunday reports that ASP President Paivi Kaukoranta has confirmed the allegations exist; an official ASP statement follows later on 24 October.

October–November 2024 A second IOM investigation opens and closes after the complainant again declines to cooperate. 

11 November 2024 The ASP president subsequently decides to seek an outsourced UN investigation into Khan via the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

21 November 2024 ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I unanimously approves and issues the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the first time the court has targeted officials of a western-allied state. It also rejected two Israeli challenges to the case under Articles 19 and 18 of the Rome Statute.

Sanctions and threats (February–August 2025)

6 February 2025 Trump issues Executive Order 14203 imposing sanctions on ICC officials, with Khan as the initial target, over the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants; his US visa is revoked, his wife and children are barred from the US, and UK bank accounts are frozen.

19 May 2025 Khan takes voluntary leave pending the OIOS investigation; deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang take over the leadership of his office. 

May 2025 Shortly before going on leave, Khan had been preparing new warrant applications for Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir over West Bank settlement expansion.

‘Financial death penalty’: How US sanctions are upending the lives of ICC judges

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5 June 2025 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announces sanctions against four ICC judges: Beti Hohler (Slovenia) and Reine Alapini-Gansou (Benin) for their role in the Netanyahu/Gallant arrest warrants; and Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza (Peru) and Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda) for authorising the Afghanistan investigation. 

9 July 2026 The US sanctions UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese over her cooperation with the ICC. 

16 July 2025 ICC judges reject an Israeli request to withdraw the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants pending Israel's jurisdictional appeal.

20 August 2025 US imposes sanctions on judges Kimberly Prost (Canada) and Nicolas Yann Guillou (France), plus deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji) and Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal).

4 September 2025 US sanctions three Palestinian NGOs for cooperating with the ICC. 

13 October 2025 MEE reveals that Margareta Kassangana, a Polish diplomat and ASP vice president, met privately with Khan's accuser to discuss the case before the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties, the court's govening body, referred the matter to the UN's OIOS in late 2024.

MEE also reports on a recorded summer 2025 phone call in which another bureau member, Uganda's ambassador Mirjam Blaak, is heard telling a colleague she believed Khan "may not come back", describing the complainant in personal terms, and repeating Netanyahu's since-debunked claim that Khan rushed the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants to pre-empt a "honey trap" defence. 

Disqualification bid and secret Smotrich filing (November 2025–May 2026)

17 November 2025 Israel formally asks the ICC to disqualify Khan from the Palestine investigation and withdraw the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants, citing the misconduct allegations as evidence of bias. The court has yet to rule on the request.

3 December 2025 The ASP's annual assembly in The Hague issues a declaration resisting US demands to drop the Palestine/Afghanistan investigations and amend the Rome Statute, without naming the US directly.

Exclusive: ICC prosecutor's office seeks arrest warrant for Israel's Smotrich

Read More »

10 December 2025 Khan submits a statement to the ICC's appeal chamber responding to Israel's disqualification request, describing for the first time a "senior UK government official" (confirmed by MEE as Cameron) who threatened UK funding withdrawal.

11 December 2025 The OIOS delivers its finalised report (150 pages, with roughly 5,000 pages of supporting evidence) to the ASP-appointed judicial panel for a legal determination.

18 December 2025 The US sanctions judges Gocha Lordkipanidze (Georgia) and Erdenebalsuren Damdin (Mongolia) after their rejection of Israel's appeal against the Gaza investigation.

22 January 2026 Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the UK Foreign Office confirms for the first time that the Cameron–Khan call took place on 23 April 2024.

9 March 2026 MEE breaks the story that a three-judge panel (Leona Theron of South Africa, Paul Lemmens of Belgium and Seymour Panton of Jamaica) unanimously concludes the OIOS findings "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty" by Khan. Lemmens, in a separate opinion, says he has "serious doubts" the allegations could ever meet the required standard, but joins the unanimous conclusion. 

23 March 2026 MEE reports that some bureau member states seek to sabotage the judges' panel's report. 

2 April 2026 A majority of the bureau votes to disregard the panel's conclusion and make its own assessment of the evidence. MEE names the 15 states that voted this way as Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Ecuador, Finland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland.

2 April 2026 The prosecutor's office secretly files an arrest warrant application for Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, alleging war crimes, crimes against humanity, and apartheid over West Bank settlement policy. It was the same warrant prepared by Khan before he went on leave but, as MEE reported, it was shelved for about a year.

Khan speaks out publicly for first time (April–May 2026)

29 April 2026 Khan gives his first public comments since going on leave, in an interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan on the outlet Zeteo. He says he thought the judges' panel finding "was the end of the matter" and is "perplexed" the bureau didn't close the case immediately. He calls the theory that he rushed the Netanyahu/Gallant warrants to distract from the allegations "baloney", noting that he told the US and others he would seek warrants in March 2024, before any allegation was raised. He says Russian and Israeli intelligence had been conducting "close surveillance" of him. 

8 May 2026 In an interview with MEE’s David Hearst Podcast, Khan accuses bureau members of running a "dangerous", biased campaign against him and says the disciplinary process is a "Khan-made process... specific to me".

Bureau's decision, run-up to vote (June–July 2026)

8 June 2026 The bureau votes to suspend Khan and, by a two-thirds majority, finds he committed "serious misconduct". MEE reports the vote as 14 in favour (Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Ecuador, Finland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea, Switzerland), four against (Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda), three abstaining (Bolivia, Bosnia, South Africa).

The confidential decision, seen by MEE, frames the finding as Khan having "engaged in a sexual relationship" with the complainant that was improper given the power imbalance, a notable shift from the original non-consensual-conduct allegation. Khan denies any sexual relationship; the complainant's account centres on non-consensual conduct. Khan's lawyers say this reframed allegation was never put to him.

18 June 2026 MEE reveals the bureau has set 24 July, at UN headquarters in New York, as the date and venue for the full ASP's special session.

13 July 2026 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio explicitly threatens that Washington would "dismantle the ICC – brick by brick, if necessary".

16 July 2026 CNN airs an interview with Khan’s accuser going public for the first time, standing by her allegations of non-consensual sex. 

17 July 2026 ASP President Kaukoranta writes to member states confirming the bureau failed to reach the required majority on two separate retaliation allegations against Khan (from other staff members), which are now closed as unproven, distinct from the sexual misconduct finding still going to the full Assembly.

18 July 2026 Josep Borrell, the former EU foreign policy chief, writes that the bureau's process amounts to a "political vote" serving what he calls a US-Israeli "offensive" to "defang" the court, citing Rubio's stated intent to dismantle the ICC "brick by brick".

21 July 2026 Khan's legal team issues an open letter to ASP members stating that formal channels for Khan to make representations have been closed, that the ASP president discouraged states from meeting with his team, and that Khan and his lawyers have been denied accreditation to attend the 24 July session.

24 July 2026 (scheduled) The full ASP votes by secret ballot at UN headquarters, New York, under Article 46 of the Rome Statute, on the single combined motion covering both the misconduct finding and Khan's removal.

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