An overwhelming majority of member states at the International Criminal Court voted over the weekend to oust Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan following allegations of sexual misconduct. Khan, a British lawyer, left his post to fight the accusations in May 2025. He remains suspended from practicing law in Britain after the Bar Standards Board imposed a temporary ban while conducting its own investigation.
1+Khan couldn’t participate in the vote, held at UN headquarters in New York. He’s barred from entering the United States under sanctions the Trump administration imposed over the ICC’s investigation into what the court called war crimes committed by senior Israeli officials in Gaza. As part of the probe against Israel, Khan issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant.
According to an investigation published in The Wall Street Journal, in December 2023, during an ICC session at UN headquarters in New York, a female assistant in her 30s—a lawyer from Malaysia who worked under him—alleged that Khan sexually harassed her in a suite at the Millennium Hilton hotel following a meeting where she pressed him to ease the situation in Gaza.
1+According to her testimony, submitted to UN officials and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the harassment continued for months during work trips to New York, Colombia, Congo, Chad, and Paris, and even at a residence owned by Khan’s wife. The woman, who is married and a mother, claimed Khan assaulted her sexually multiple times in situations where she felt “trapped.”