ICC member states remove Prosecutor Karim Khan by majority vote
Member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) voted on Friday by a majority to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan over misconduct claims, during a special session at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
According to diplomatic sources, 82 out of the court's 125 members voted by a secret ballot to dismiss the prosecutor, surpassing the absolute majority threshold (63) needed for removal.
Thirteen voted against removal, while 15 abstained.
It is the first time in the ICC's 24-year history that member states have voted to remove a sitting chief prosecutor from office.
The removal decision takes immediate effect, and elections for a new prosecutor will follow.
Member states were asked on Friday to vote on the finding of 8 June by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties, the court's executive body, which concluded that "the evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt" that Khan "engaged in a sexual relationship" with the complainant, his direct special assistant. It argued that "in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate".
Khan denied that any sexual relationship had taken place, 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 stood by the allegation of non-consensual sexual conduct.
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.
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.
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 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 180 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".
Misconduct allegations
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.
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, after voting by a majority that he committed "serious misconduct," and referred the matter to the ASP.
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, 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.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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