The International Criminal Court has scheduled a vote for July 24 on whether to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office after the court’s oversight body found that sexual-assault allegations against him were credible and were not part of a plot to undermine the institution, according to diplomats and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The findings, from a group of diplomats from 21 countries that oversees the court’s operations, say Khan committed serious misconduct and should be removed. The report is being circulated among the court’s full membership of 125 nations ahead of the vote, which is expected to take place at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Khan, a hard-charging British lawyer, has been the face of the court through the most consequential period of its 24-year history, leading high-profile investigations that included seeking arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hamas leaders, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He has been on leave since last May, when the Journal first reported the severity of the allegations against him. The oversight body voted to suspend Khan last month ahead of a vote on his removal.
An aide to Khan, a Malaysian lawyer in her 30s who is Muslim and strongly supported the investigations into Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leaders, told U.N. investigators that Khan coerced her into sex multiple times over a number of months — at his residence, on trips abroad, and in his office at the ICC headquarters in The Hague, according to the report.
“[The victim’s] testimony was given candidly, unhesitatingly and with details that rendered her experiences believable,” the findings state. The oversight body said there was no evidence that Khan’s aide had been pressured to make allegations against him, and that “[the victim] has made no personal or professional gain from having made the allegations.”
Khan denies any sexual misconduct. His lawyers said the report by the oversight body was “deeply flawed.” “The decision is unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence,” they said. “Mr. Khan’s legal team is taking all necessary steps to challenge the decision, protect his rights, and ensure that due process is upheld.”
According to the report, Khan told U.N. investigators that he believed his aide was pressured by third parties to accuse him of sexual assault. She first told colleagues about Khan’s alleged behavior in April 2024, a few weeks before he announced he would seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for their conduct of the war in Gaza. Khan told one colleague that he believed the allegations were part of an Israeli intelligence operation against him, people familiar with the discussions said. Khan’s lawyers denied that he had made such a remark.
The report by the oversight body notes that Khan “declined to deny that he engaged in a sexual relationship” during an interview with U.N. investigators in May 2025. The report says that was likely due to concern that the victim had made recordings that proved there was a sexual relationship. Later, the report says, Khan categorically denied the relationship when it became clear that the victim didn’t have such recordings. The report states that “assertions made by the prosecutor…of consistent categorical denial are devoid of credibility.”
The report says the evidence established beyond reasonable doubt that the prosecutor engaged in a sexual relationship with his direct subordinate. “In the context of that power imbalance, a sexual relationship could never be appropriate,” it says.
Khan’s lawyers said he didn’t change his position and “unequivocally denied all allegations of impropriety when they were first raised with him.”
The vote on July 24 is likely to pit much of the court’s membership against a smaller group of mostly African nations that have stood behind Khan during the investigation, ICC officials said. Khan’s removal would herald a new period of uncertainty for the world’s leading body for prosecuting war crimes and other grave human rights violations, the court that is the heir to the Nuremberg tribunals that tried Nazis after World War II.
Khan’s removal wouldn’t have any direct effect on the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. They will remain in place unless challenges filed by Israel convince appeals-court judges at the ICC to quash them. Khan, the court’s deputy prosecutors, and several ICC judges are under U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration because of the court’s decisions to issue those warrants. Trump officials have also been weighing sanctions on the ICC as a whole, a move that could cripple it by cutting it off from much of the global financial system.
MSI previously reported that judges overseeing the disciplinary process had said Khan could potentially resume work while the inquiry continued.