International Criminal Court (ICC) officials confirmed to the Daily Mail this weekend that they had been made aware of an alleged accusation of sexual harassment against top prosecutor Karim Khan, who himself denied any wrongdoing and suggested he and his family had faced targeted harassment themselves.
Khan, who has held the ICC prosecutor position since 2021, made headlines this year when he requested the international court issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in a public statement that demanded similar warrants for senior leaders of the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas. Khan had previously successfully requested an arrest warrant for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in response to his ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
The court has not yet issued the requests for warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant, and the Hamas terrorists. Two of the terrorists Khan requested warrants for — Hamas “political” chief Ismail Haniyeh and his successor Yahya Sinwar — have since died. Haniyeh died in July after his temporary room in Tehran, Iran, exploded during a visit to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Thursday they had encountered Sinwar in Rafah, Gaza, and eliminated him from the battlefield.
The Daily Mail reported on Saturday that an unknown female official at the ICC accused Khan of inappropriate sexual conduct. The woman in question reportedly told a “colleague,” who then told higher-ranking officials. The case ended up before the ICC’s “Independent Oversight Mechanism” (IOM), which investigated the case, but the woman in question allegedly did not wish to make a complaint. Psychologists and other experts have for years documented that many women victimized by sexual harassment or assault decline to publicly denounce this behavior out of shame, concern for their careers, or lack of trust in accountability systems.
The Mail noted that allegations against Khan of this nature resurfaced last week on an anonymous Twitter account.
An official at the ICC, identified as Paivi Kaukoranta, President of the Assembly of States Parties, appeared to confirm that the IOM addressed such allegations this year in a comment to the Mail.
“Following the conversation with the alleged victim, the IOM was not in a position to proceed with an investigation at that stage,” Kaukoranta noted.
Khan himself sent a lengthy statement to the Daily Mail enthusiastically denying any sexual misconduct and vowing he would cooperate if approached about an investigation into his behavior, suggesting no oversight officials had approached him in such a way.
“It is with deep sadness that I understand reports of this nature are to be aired publicly in relation to me. … I absolutely can confirm there is no truth to suggestions of misconduct,” Khan’s statement read.
“This is a moment in which myself and the International Criminal Court are subject to a wide range of attacks and threats. In recent months my family including my wife and child have also been targeted,” he continued. Khan nonetheless did not dismiss any potential investigation, stating it was “essential” for sexual harassment allegations to be “thoroughly listened to, examined and subjected to a proper process.” He vowed to cooperate with the IOM if asked but emphasized that “there has never been such a complaint lodged against me by anyone” in his 30-year career.
The ICC is a global court system that has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals accused of only three types of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It was created by the Rome Statute and thus only has jurisdiction over states that have signed the Rome Statute, significantly diminishing its ability to act.
Khan’s call for an arrest warrant against Putin attracted global attention, but the controversy surrounding his demands for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders simultaneously prompted much greater international condemnation. Khan’s request for the warrants appeared to equate the Israeli government’s self-defense response against Hamas to the event that initially prompted that response: the genocidal siege of Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 people and engaged in widespread acts of gang-rape, infanticide, desecration of corpses, abduction, torture, and other atrocities. Khan charged Netanyahu and Gallant with three charges of “war crimes” and three of “crimes against humanity” for entering Hamas-controlled Gaza to eliminate the threat of a second such attack.
“We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy. These crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day,” Khan wrote in his request, published in May.
“Notwithstanding any military goals they may have, the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza — namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population — are criminal,” the prosecutor added.
Israel is not a Rome Statute signatory. The Palestinian Authority — which controls the West Bank and not Gaza — signed onto the Rome Statute in 2015 despite not being a state entity.
An outraged Netanyahu condemned Khan for creating “a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas.”
“This is like creating a moral equivalence after September 11th between President Bush and Osama Bin Laden, or during World War II between FDR and Hitler,” Netanyahu said in his response to the request.
Hamas, in turn, said in a statement that its members “appreciate the decision of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for two Zionist war criminals” but called for more arrest warrant requests for other Israeli leaders.
Khan further inflamed his relationship with Israel in September by meeting with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — one of the world’s most enthusiastic supporters of Hamas. The three met during the United Nations General Assembly summit that month.
“Israel must be held accountable for the crimes it has committed,” Erdogan reportedly told the prosecutor, “and … it is extremely important for the genocide case filed against Israel at the International Criminal Court to be concluded and for the perpetrators of genocide to receive the punishment they deserve.”
Erdogan has repeatedly insisted, including shortly after October 7, that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization” and compared the Israeli government to Nazi Germany.
Netanyahu responded to the meetings by calling Khan a “joke.”
“Rather than issuing arrest warrants for war crimes against Erdogan and Abbas, Khan remains obsessed with casting as war criminals Israel’s democratically elected leaders, who are pursuing a just war with just means against genocidal terrorists,” he asserted. “What a joke!”
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