Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was suspended late Monday following a two-year probe investigating him over long-standing sexual harassment allegations.
Khan will remain suspended from the ICC pending a yet-to-be scheduled special secret ballot vote from the court’s 125 member states that will decide his future at the organization. The Assembly of States Parties, the ICC’s management oversight and legislative body, majorly voted to suspend Khan during a Monday night meeting, referring the case to disciplinary proceedings.
“The assessment of the Bureau was based on the report of an investigation undertaken by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the underlying evidence, the advice of an ad hoc Panel of judicial experts, and written submissions,” The Assembly’s statement read.
“The decision of the Bureau and the related documentation will remain confidential. The Bureau continues to call for due respect for the privacy and the rights of all parties concerned, as well as for the integrity of the ongoing process,” the text continued.
For the past two years, the now-suspended ICC chief prosecutor found himself at the center of legal filings and probes alleging he engaged in sexual misconduct towards a female ICC aide. The woman denounced in the filings that Khan allegedly engaged in coercive and non-consensual sexual behavior against her in several occasions over an extended period of time. Khan has publicly denied the allegations.
He was partially suspended from his position in 2025 amid the investigations and remains on leave.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that a copy of a U.N. investigation report seen by the outlet states that Khan had “nonconsensual sexual contact” with the aide “in his office, at his private residence, and whilst on mission.” AP further noted that a three-judge panel selected by the executive committee for a legal assessment of the findings found that the investigation “was not conclusive enough.”
Khan’s lawyers rejected their client’s suspension in the strongest terms in a statement shared with international outlets, describing the ruling as “unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence.”
As Breitbart News reported in 2024, Khan, a 56-year-old British-born lawyer, is widely know as the face of the ICC’s efforts towards prosecuting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s self-defense actions against the jihadist terror group Hamas. Reports published at the time indicated that Khan allegedly pressured an unnamed woman into not cooperating with the sexual harassment investigations against him. In May 2024, Khan requested international arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in August 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Khan chose to “hit the Jews” when the sexual misconduct allegations against the prosecutor surfaced.
WATCH: Netanyahu Challenges ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan
Netanyahu detailed to Breitbart News that Khan acted against Israel in an apparent effort to distract attention away from the sexual abuse investigations against the chief prosecutor. Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the ICC.
“So he decided the best way to get out of that was to hit the Jews, or hit the Prime Minister of the Jewish state, because you’ll have all that, you know, all the all these extreme progressives lining up automatically behind him. They won’t support Israel. They’d support him,” Netanyahu told Breitbart News at the time.
“So obviously they did. That’s exactly what he did. He he wanted to extricate himself from these sexual assault charges, and he slapped these false, completely false charges … against Israel,” Netanyahu continued.
President Donald Trump sanctioned the ICC during his first term in response to the court’s prosecution of U.S. soldiers. Former President Joe Biden lifted the sanctions during his administration. President Trump, however, not just reinstated the sanctions, but his administration also expanded them last year, sanctioning ICC judges for targeting the U.S. and Israel.