ICC Member States Vote 82-13 to Fire Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan Over Sexual Misconduct Findings

Member states of the International Criminal Court voted Friday to dismiss chief prosecutor Karim Khan following allegations of sexual misconduct, the first removal of a sitting chief prosecutor in the court's 24-year history.

Assembly of States President Päivi Kaukoranta said 82 of the court's 125 member states voted in favor of removal, concluding that Khan "committed serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty." Thirteen states voted against and 15 abstained. The secret ballot was held at a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday afternoon, roughly two years after the allegations against Khan first emerged in 2024.

The vote came days after Khan's accuser, a junior ICC staffer who has asked to be identified only by her first name, Sarah, went public in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Over months, U.N. investigators examined her claims that Khan sexually harassed her and repeatedly subjected her to non-consensual acts. "There was the pawing, the physical nature of it — but it didn't start that way," she told Amanpour, describing what she said were slow encroachments on her boundaries, "not just physically but emotionally as well."

Khan, a 56-year-old British barrister, has denied all wrongdoing and will contest the outcome. His attorney, Tayab Ali, said in a statement after the vote that the decision was "unsupported by any lawful or properly reasoned finding that Mr Khan KC committed misconduct or breached his duties," adding: "He has denied the allegations from the outset and continues to do so." Ali said Khan was not given a fair opportunity to be heard and argued that the investigation by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services did not find misconduct. Kaukoranta countered that the assembly "fully respected" Khan's due process and that the OIOS investigation did find evidence supporting the allegations.

The dismissal lands at a precarious moment for the court. The Hague-based tribunal is already under sustained pressure from Washington, which views the independent judicial body as a threat to American sovereignty, and Khan's tenure produced some of the most politically explosive arrest warrants in the court's history. His removal immediately triggers an election process for a successor, but diplomats do not expect a new prosecutor to be voted in before next year, leaving the office in the hands of a deputy while dozens of active investigations grind on.

For the ICC, the practical cost is measured in momentum. Cases spanning Ukraine, Sudan, Libya, the Philippines and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have moved at the pace the prosecutor's office set, and a leadership vacuum of a year or more arrives just as member states are debating how far they are willing to go to defend the institution from external attack.