ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan Removed Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations

A Two-Year Institutional Crisis Resolved

The removal of Karim Khan as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court brings to a close a slow-burn institutional crisis that has weighed on the Hague-based tribunal since the allegations first surfaced in 2024. The Assembly of States Parties voted 82 to 13, with 15 abstentions, to strip Khan of his office after determining that he had committed "serious misconduct" and "a serious breach of duty," according to the assembly's chair, Paivi Kaukoranta. The accusations came from a close colleague, known publicly only as Sarah, who alleged that Khan had sexually assaulted her repeatedly over an extended period. Khan was suspended in June; the vote formalized the end of his tenure.

Khan has consistently denied the allegations and, in a defiant public posture, framed them as retaliation for his most consequential legal work. He pointed to his pursuit of an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza, arguing that powerful actors sought to remove him in response. Sarah, in a CNN interview, rejected Khan's narrative, describing it as a deflection from her specific complaints about his conduct.

Geopolitical Ripples Across the Atlantic

The United States reacted with open satisfaction. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote on X that "it is good that he is gone," while signaling that Washington's posture toward the court itself has not softened. The Trump administration has previously sanctioned Khan and other ICC officials, and Pigott's statement explicitly described a U.S. plan to "dismantle" the institution. Neither the US nor Israel — both of which have clashed with the ICC over its jurisdiction — is a state party to the Rome Statute, meaning neither voted in the assembly. The Trump administration, according to the report, sees Khan's removal as a minor step inside a broader strategy of confronting the court.

Israel's UN delegation seized on the news to renew its critique of the warrants, calling the underlying investigation a "political witch hunt against Israel." The warrants, which also target senior Hamas figures, remain formally in force; under the court's procedures, only ICC judges can lift them. That means Khan's removal creates a procedural vacuum rather than a legal one: his cases, including those tied to the Gaza war, must be reassigned, but the legal architecture he built remains intact unless the judges themselves intervene.

What Khan's Fall Means for the Court

The ICC now faces the dual challenge of restoring internal credibility while maintaining the momentum of its highest-profile prosecutions. Khan's tenure, which began in 2021, produced some of the court's most aggressive modern cases — the warrants against Netanyahu and Hamas leaders were unprecedented in targeting a sitting leader of a close Western ally. Removing Khan on misconduct grounds allows the institution to distance its legal findings from the personal controversy surrounding him, but the political firestorm around the Israel-related warrants is unlikely to subside. For Germany, a long-standing supporter of the court and a contributor to its work, the vote underscores both the resilience of the Rome Statute system and its vulnerability to political pressure. The next chief prosecutor will inherit not just Khan's docket but the harder question of whether the court can pursue politically charged cases without its leaders becoming the targets of those very investigations.