Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has reportedly stepped down from his position amid an ongoing investigation into allegations of sexual assault.
Khan, who has held the position since 2021, has gone on leave while the external investigation into the claims is concluded, sources within the court told Reuters. Khan denies all the allegations.
The 55-year-old has been accused by a colleague, a Malaysian lawyer in her 30s, of pressuring her into “coerced sexual intercourse”.
The woman told the Wall Street Journal that she had asked to meet Khan is order to discuss the manner in which he treated his staff, which she suggested was inappropriate.
However, she claimed that, when she arrived in his suite at the Millennium Hilton Hotel in New York, he “took her hand and eventually pulled her to the bed”.
"Then he pulled off her pants and forced sexual intercourse,” the report added.
The woman alleged that Khan performed “non-consensual sex acts” on her on multiple occasions in a number of countries, including the US, Colombia, France and Chad, as well as at his wife’s home in the Netherlands.
An investigation is currently underway, conducted by the ICC’s external watchdog, the Independent Oversight Mechanism, with Khan firmly maintaining his innocence.
The allegations emerged shortly after Khan announced his intention to seek arrest warrants, later granted by the courts, against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
According to the Journal: “The timing of the announcement has spurred questions about whether Khan was aiming to protect himself from the sexual-assault allegations.
"The day before announcing the warrant application, Khan abruptly cancelled a trip to Israel and Gaza that he had previously said was important to make his decision.”
Khan’s lawyers have called the allegations of sexual misconduct “categorically untrue” and denied any link between them and the decision to seek the warrants.
The latest development comes after reports suggested that Khan’s work had “ground to a halt” following the imposition of sanctions on the court by Washington.
The British lawyer had reportedly lost access to his Microsoft email account as a result, according to the Associated Press.
Sanctions are said to be so damaging that on officials stated: “It's hard to see how the court makes it through the next four years [of the Trump administration].”
