The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan will go on leave while an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment takes place.
This was reported by the ISS press service in a comment to Babel.
"On May 16, 2025, the Prosecutor announced his decision to take a leave of absence pending the completion of the process conducted by the United Nations Internal Oversight Service (OIOS). During his absence, the Office of the Prosecutor will be led by the Deputy Prosecutors," the response states.
What preceded
The sexual harassment allegations against Karim Khan became known in late October 2024. Initially, information about this appeared in the anonymous X-account ICC Leaks, and later The Guardian and the Associated Press wrote about it.
The ICC has an internal inspection system, the so-called Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM), which publishes a report every year. The 2024 report says that unnamed court employees reported that a high-ranking elected official had harassed their colleague. The media claims that this is Khan.
The woman who reported the harassment did not want the UN to launch an investigation, but later asked the ICC Assembly of States Parties to examine the situation. In May 2025, The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of her testimony to the UN.
The woman, who has not been named, worked on the ISS for six years before joining Khanʼs team in 2023. She claims that his courtship began shortly after that, during a work trip to London in March 2023.
According to her testimony, Khan repeatedly forced her to perform non-consensual sexual acts. She eventually confessed to Khan that she was having suicidal thoughts, after which he left her alone for several weeks, but then began to harass her again. She also stated that Khan never used a condom.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Khan was questioned by UN investigators in the case on May 8 and 9. Khan himself denies the allegations. He asked the head of the NMM to investigate the allegations and promised to cooperate.
- The scandal erupted amid a conflict between the ICC and the US and Israel: the ICC asked judges to issue arrest warrants for both Hamas members and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US imposed sanctions against the ICC and Karim Khan himself because of this. The court also came under massive cyberattack — in October, the Dutch police received a request to investigate possible interference by Israeli intelligence in the work of the court.
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