The ICC removed Karim Khan from his own investigation in Venezuela. Now Israel wants it to do the same over Gaza

A US-based group which successfully forced the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor to recuse himself from an investigation into Venezuela has accused Karim Khan of “acting in unprecedented haste” in seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.

Khan was ordered by the court to step back from his office’s investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in Venezuela in August following a complaint of a conflict of interest by the Washington-based Arcadia Foundation which was upheld by the ICC’s appeals chamber.

That ruling could now have a bearing on the prosecutor’s investigation into Israeli leaders because the same court is currently considering a similar complaint by Israel calling for Khan to be removed and for warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant to be dropped because of questions, according to Israel's submission to the court, about Khan’s impartiality.

Arcadia, which is recognised by the ICC as an organisation representing Venezuelan victims, accused Khan of a conflict of interest because his sister-in-law, Venkateswari Alagendra, is part of the legal team representing the Venezuelan government and has worked with the prosecutor in previous cases.

In February the ICC's appeals chamber initially dismissed the complaint. Responding to the ruling on social media, Arcadia's CEO, Robert Carmona-Borjas, said he would write to the Trump administration to call on it to sanction the judges who voted to dismiss it. His comments came days after the US had imposed sanctions on Khan and threatened further measures against the court and its officials.

Arcadia also requested that the appeals chamber examine the case again. This time, in August, it ordered Khan to recuse himself from the investigation.

Khan complied, but in a statement to the court he accused Arcadia of using “coercive and intimidatory tactics”, and warned that the appeals chamber’s reasoning in the case had the potential “to significantly delay, or disrupt ICC judicial work”.

'The Prosecutor's Office’s decision to submit applications for warrants of arrest against senior Israeli and Hamas leaders followed a robust review process and analysis of the evidence'

- ICC prosecutor's office

He said Arcadia’s complaint was “replete with false or erroneous statements, misapprehensions or vituperative comments” which suggested an “apparent preoccupation” with his office’s investigation into Israeli officials and called its motives and conduct into question.

Carmona-Borjas told Middle East Eye that Arcadia’s complaint against Khan was “strictly juridical and institutional”, and “not a personal campaign against him, nor driven by any geopolitical alignment”.

He said Arcadia was engaged in “lawful advocacy” and denied it had sought to use coercion and intimidation. He said its complaint was based on “objective, documentary facts” and referred MEE to Arcadia’s submission to the ICC in response to Khan’s statement.

“We do not align ourselves as a matter of course with the litigation strategy of any government, whether in Jerusalem, Caracas or elsewhere,” said Carmona-Borjas.

“Our mandate, and our filings, arise from our status as Venezuelan victims and as a victims’ organisation. From that standpoint, what we demand from the court is consistency in the application of its own law and ethical standards.”

Israeli complaint

The circumstances of Khan’s forced recusal are significant because the same appeals chamber – and the same five judges - are now considering Israel’s complaint against Khan.

Israel’s complaint, filed to the ICC on 17 November, asserts that Khan’s impartiality is in doubt because of media reports linking his application for the arrest warrants for Israeli leaders to his “desire to suppress or discredit” sexual misconduct allegations.

It notes that in the Venezuela case the court determined it was only necessary to establish that the prosecutor’s impartiality might reasonably be doubted.

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“The doubts concerning the Prosecutor’s impartiality do not depend in any way on the truth or falsity of the sexual misconduct allegations,” it said.

“What matters is whether the appearance of the Prosecutor’s impartiality in the conduct of investigations in this situation could be reasonably doubted by a reasonable observer, properly informed, based on the Prosecutor’s awareness of and reaction to those allegations.”

Khan, who strenuously denies wrongdoing, is currently on leave pending the outcome of an investigation into the allegations by the United Nations’ Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

In a response to Israel's complaint, published by the court on Monday and signed by Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan, the prosecutor's office called for the case to be summarily dismissed.

It argued that Israel had no standing to ask for Khan's disqualification, or for the withdrawal of the warrants. It said Israel's reliance on the appeals chamber's Venezuela ruling was inappropriate because the two cases were "incomparable".

It rejected Israel's claim that the validity of the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, and the Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, was in question, noting that the court's judges had assessed the applications and the evidence independently.

"The Office’s decision to submit Applications for Warrants of Arrest against senior Israeli and Hamas leaders followed a robust review process and analysis of the evidence, and was strictly guided by the Court’s legal framework," it said.

Arcadia’s complaint to the ICC accused Khan of prioritising the investigation into Israeli officials at the expense of his office’s work on other cases, including Venezuela.

It described Netanyahu as “the leader of a democratic nation operating within a robust judicial system and grappling with existential security threats”, and accused Khan of pursuing the Israeli prime minister with “unprecedented urgency" while allowing the Venezuelan case "to languish".

'Israel is more likely to uphold the ceasefire than the Appeals Chamber is to invalidate the arrest warrants'

- senior ICC expert

This, Arcadia said, was indicative of "a troubling inconsistency that undermines the principle of equality before the law and casts a shadow over the ICC’s credibility”.

Similar accusations were made on the social media platform X by Carmona-Borjas following the ICC appeals chamber’s dismissal of the group’s complaint in February.

Carmona-Borjas said he would call on the Trump administration to sanction the judges who rejected the complaint, and further accused Khan of having “abandoned any pretence of impartiality” in regard to his investigation into Israel.

In response to questions from MEE, Carmona-Borjas said Arcadia had not contacted the White House or the State Department to ask for sanctions because by the time it had explored doing so the US government had already imposed sanctions against ICC judges.

He said his comments about Khan’s investigation into Israeli officials were intended to highlight what he said was a disparity in the way the prosecutor had handled the issue of complementarity in the two situations.

Complementarity is the process through which the prosecutor’s office assesses whether a country’s own judicial system is investigating, or is capable of investigating, alleged crimes in order to determine whether a situation should be escalated by the ICC.

Carmona-Borjas said Khan had “invested years in engagement with the Venezuelan authorities”, but had “moved rapidly towards arrest warrants” against Israeli officials.

“To describe this as a ‘preoccupation’ is simply to acknowledge that victims in one situation are entitled to question why the Court’s urgency seems to materialise elsewhere and not in their own case,” he said.

Pressure campaign

The claim that Khan pursued the case against Israeli officials with "unprecedented urgency" has been comprehensively debunked, including by Middle East Eye’s reporting.

The criminal investigation into alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories had been launched in 2021 by Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda. After taking office, Khan had raised the criteria for applying for warrants to include a realistic prospect of conviction.

Following the beginning of the war in Gaza, and amid growing calls for the ICC to investigate alleged war crimes by both Israel and Hamas, he took the unusual step of convening an independent legal panel of prominent lawyers to examine the Palestine case.

A source in The Hague, with knowledge of the matter and speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE last summer that Khan had done everything “by the book” in applying for the warrants.

“If anything, he delayed the process,” the source said.

Claims that Khan sought the arrest warrants in May last year to win support in the context of sexual misconduct allegations against him have also been widely discredited.

An investigation by MEE revealed that Khan’s decision to apply for warrants was made six weeks before the allegations were made, and the application for the warrants was submitted in late May only after an internal investigation into the harassment accusations had been opened and closed.

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Khan and the ICC itself have been the target of a concerted pressure campaign over its investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza, with the chief prosecutor subjected to US sanctions in February.

His deputies have since been sanctioned by the Trump administration, as have four judges at the court, which the US accuses of “illegitimate actions” targeting the US and Israel.

The ICC’s appeals chamber has already rejected a number of pretrial challenges brought by Israel against the arrest warrants brought against Netanyahu and Gallant, which were approved by ICC judges in November 2024.

One senior ICC expert familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, described Israel’s latest complaint against Khan as “frivolous”, and dismissed the appeals chamber’s ruling in the Venezuelan case as irrelevant.

“Israel's request simply attempts to repurpose a discredited narrative about the prosecutor acting too quickly in order to undermine arrest warrants issued unanimously on the basis of evidence and applications that Israel has never seen,” the expert said.

"Israel is more likely to uphold the ceasefire than the Appeals Chamber is to invalidate the arrest warrants."

This comes as the ICC’s oversight body, the Assembly of State Parties, is holding its annual meeting in The Hague with the spectre of US sanctions and the misconduct allegations facing the court's chief prosecutor hanging over proceedings.

Numerous countries condemned sanctions and "external pressure" on the ICC on Monday, although they did not directly name the US. Some countries urged the court to take misconduct allegations seriously, implicitly referencing Khan.

The prosecutor himself, still on leave, was nowhere to be seen. The deputy prosecutors played down the toll that sanctions was having on their ability to do their jobs.

But the biggest fear among ICC staff, not widely discussed publicly in public forums at the court, is that the Trump administration could sanction the court itself.