Karim Khan dared to hold Israel to account - and that's why he was brought down

There was a revealing post in the welter of reaction that followed the all too predictable dismissal of the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday.

It was made by Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, who warned New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani had just called the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal who should be arrested the next time he arrives on US soil, although Mamdani admitted he did not have the powers to do so.

Danon repeated the claim - that now appears to be established as fact - that Khan used the warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister to cover up his alleged sexual misdemeanours.

As Middle East Eye investigation made clear, Khan launched the meticulously prepared warrants six weeks before he was even aware of the allegations. 

But truth and due process were irrelevant in the 18-month campaign to remove Khan.

This included a media campaign in the Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, The Guardian and latterly CNN; private warnings by David Cameron, then foreign secretary, who told him Britain would defund the ICC and withdraw from the Rome Statute if the warrants were issued; Republican senators who told him: "Target Israel and we will target you", and being named publicly as a suspect before he had even had the chance to defend himself by the president of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), Finland's Paivi Kaukoranta.

Danon threatened Mamdani with the same fate as Khan. "@NYCMayor Zohran Mamdani, take note: using Israel as a political weapon will not shield you from accountability," Danon posted.

A new precedent

In the past, Israel preferred to operate behind the scenes. When it attempted to pressurise Khan’s predecessor Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, it did so discreetly.

The former prosecutor described in an interview with Al Jazeera a meeting with the then Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, in a New York hotel during a UN General Assembly meeting.

"What was clear was that they did not want the investigations into the situation in Palestine to go on," she said. "That’s the bottom line."

Asked whether Cohen had told her Israel could "take care" of her and warned that proceeding could compromise her family's security, Bensouda replied: "He did. He did."

But this campaign to remove Khan set a new precedent. Israel claimed ownership from the start, and made no attempt to conceal from Khan himself or the outside world that it was behind these allegations.

It sent a Mossad team to The Hague, where Khan lives, to intimidate him. It passed messages through one British lawyer to Khan, although the lawyer claimed to MEE he was only speaking personally. 

Finally, Netanyahu himself "revealed" four other women were preparing to testify against Khan. This was hours before The Guardian claimed there was a second woman about to come forward.

Nothing, of course, happened.

Khan stuck to his guns and to his belief that the ICC, of all courts, would respect due process. The latter faith may have been badly misplaced.

The allegations against Khan were investigated for over a year by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). It made 137 findings not one of which amounted to misconduct let alone sexual misconduct.

The evidence gathered by the OIOS was then meticulously reviewed by a panel of three senior international judges appointed by the ASP. 

This judicial panel decided that the OIOS findings "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty" by Khan. They were using the same standards of evidence that the ICC itself used.

There then began a campaign by the ASP itself to sabotage the report made by the judges that they themselves had appointed. 

A kangaroo court 

Just to dwell on the last point. 

This is a court we are talking about. In it, judges are appointed for their skill in sifting through and judging evidence. 

And here was the political bureau formed of former diplomats appointed by member states deciding to overrule the legal opinion of their most senior judges, and retry the allegations in a kangaroo court all by themselves.

The campaign to remove Khan set a new precedent. Israel claimed ownership from the start, and made no attempt to conceal that it was behind these allegations

Just imagine what the response of western governments would have been if the Russian President Vladimir Putin, against whom Khan has also issued an arrest warrant, has done the same thing as Netanyahu did to pressurise member states of the  ICC.

But it was even worse than that. 

To sack Khan, the Bureau of the Assembly of State Parties, the court's governing body, had to deny him and his lawyers due process or indeed any process at all.

This included members of the bureau saying privately to the complainant and each other that Khan was finished; changing the charge on which he was to be dismissed without putting it to him; and changing voting rules.

Margareta Kassangana, a Polish diplomat and ASP vice president, met privately with Khan's accuser to discuss the case before the bureau referred the matter to the UN's OIOS in late 2024.

Another bureau member, Uganda's ambassador Mirjam Blaak, was heard telling a colleague she believed Khan "may not come back", describing the complainant in personal terms.

In my interview with him, Khan said the bureau was making things up as they went along. "It's a Khan-made process... specific to me."

In their vote to suspend Khan, the bureau found he committed "serious misconduct". The decision, seen by MEE, accused Khan of having engaged in a sexual relationship with the complainant, which was improper due to the power imbalance between them.

This allegation had never been put to Khan. He has been firstly accused of touching the complainant, then rape, but never of having a consensual sexual relationship.

The complainant’s account centred on non-consensual conduct. The bureau sacked him on the basis of a charge they had never put to him. 

Just to make sure the public hanging of their chief prosecutor would go ahead on schedule, the bureau amended the voting process, from a two-stage vote to a single vote in a manner that would deny the ASP the opportunity to make its own characterisation of the alleged misconduct.

Three camps

The campaign to remove Khan divided observers into three camps: those who believed in his innocence and the whole process was orchestrated by Israel; those who believed he was guilty and using the warrants as a cover; and a group in between who believed Khan was not a "credible prosecutor" even though his principal conduct as prosecutor was. His removal would enable the warrants he started to go ahead.

The founders of the ICC must not let it be destroyed

Read More »

This was the view of Kenneth Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch. Roth said on CNN that as the warrants were the work of a team of prosecutors, and approved by three judges in the pretrial chamber, they should go ahead.

Following the removal of Khan, the ICC’s office of the prosecutor said its work would continue without interruption. The ICC has more than a dozen active investigations in Ukraine, Darfur, Libya and Afghanistan.

But as MEE reported, the office sought in April to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and another for National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was being prepared.

Those applications were ready before Khan went on leave in May 2025 and nothing has happened since. 

The original warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant remain in force and only judges can withdraw them. Israel has mounted a series of legal challenges and two of them are still pending.

The most important of them is that the court has no jurisdiction over its nationals since Israel is not a state party to the Rome Statute.

This is now being bounced between the Appeals Chamber and a lower chamber and a final answer could well run into 2027.

In one of the many offers to get Khan to back down, a suggestion was made to enable the chief prosecutor to "climb down from the tree". It was suggested that Khan reclassify the warrants as confidential. This would allow Israel to contest them in private.

As far as is known, all work on Israel within the ICC has been paralysed. 

Two deputy prosecutors, Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal, continue to head the office. Both deputies were sanctioned by the US for maintaining the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants after assuming leadership of the office.

Those in the forefront of the campaign to get rid of Khan are now crowing they want more scalps.

Who is next?

Chief among them is the US State Department. Its spokesman Tommy Pigott said: "Karim Khan is a quintessential example of the ICC's corruption and abuse of its supposed authority. It is good that he is gone, but he is only one small cog in this irredeemably corrupt institution. Today's outcome will have no impact on the United States' plans to dismantle the ICC."

What Karim Khan did had force. It was the most important international threat to Israel since it launched its genocide on Gaza. That is why Khan had to be gotten rid of

His boss, Marco Rubio, is on a campaign to dismantle the ICC "brick by brick" as he put it.

He said: "The International Criminal Court seeks to become the unaccountable arbiter of a new global law -  empowered to prosecute and arrest our citizens at will and existentially threaten American sovereignty. We will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve." 

Empowered by Khan’s removal, prominent pro-Israeli lawyers are now openly threatening other targets such as Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.

Hillel Neuer, director of United Nations Watch, posted: "No more immunity for international officials who abuse their offices. ICC prosecutor Karim Khan sexually abused his employees. Our campaign to remove him succeeded - he's just been fired."

"You’re next, @FranceskAlbs. Your support for Hamas terrorism will have consequences."

Note the word "our".

But of course on this point Neuer was only too accurate. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar played an "active role" in the decision of member states of the ICC to dismiss Khan. 

Sa’ar oversaw "a dedicated task force and employed intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at securing Khan’s removal from office," according to Guy Azriel, diplomatic correspondent for i24 News.

Welcoming the decision, Netanyahu posted that he has spoken to Rubio about giving the ICC the coup de grace.

"He once again reaffirmed America’s determination to act forcefully against this institution - an institution that undermines justice, attacks democratic and sovereign nations, and seeks to subordinate their security to the decisions of unaccountable and corrupt officials in The Hague," Netanyahu wrote.

By joining the campaign to remove Khan, Roth has not protected the ICC or fellow human rights lawyers from this sort of abuse and attack. He has further imperilled the court and them.

A lost battle

Tellingly, on the same day of Khan’s dismissal, the UN voted to give Austrian lawyer Volker Turk another four year term as human rights chief. Israel ignored this setback and put no discernible effort into countering it.

This is because it knows that what the UN does is irrelevant. It has issued resolution after resolution, statement after statement, report after report and nothing about the occupation has changed - except for the worse.

Exclusive: How Karim Khan’s Israel war crimes probe was derailed by threats, leaks and sex claims

Read More »

But what Karim Khan did had force. It was the most important international threat to Israel since it launched its genocide on Gaza. That is why Khan had to be gotten rid of. 

Israel is fighting a losing battle.

Mamdani’s video condemning Netanyahu as a war criminal ratcheted up over 200 million views. 

After Khan’s dismissal, YouGov asked American adults whether US authorities should arrest Netanyahu when he comes next. Forty six percent said yes, 28 percent no, and 25 percent were not sure.

The day after, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said that Netanyahu was a war criminal and was not welcome in London.

This is the legacy of a stubborn British prosecutor who refused to be intimidated. 

The member states of the ICC have failed the test of upholding international justice. The late Senator Lindsey Graham was right when he said the ICC was only for "Africans and thugs like Putin. It is not for democracies like Israel and United States of America".

Because this is the way the majority of its member states have behaved. 

When they came under pressure, they buckled and unfortunately that includes the Global South. When they need international justice and find it is not there, they can only look themselves in the mirror.

Whatever now happens to Khan, his name will be linked forever to the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Galant, which remain the most effective, serious and meaningful response the international community has made to the genocide in Gaza.

All the other responses are rhetorical. That is why Israel put such effort into getting rid of Khan.

Those warrants expose Israeli war crimes as never before and, for the first time ever in this conflict, make the highest office bearers in the land accountable for them.

Khan dared to stand against the mighty and powerful to pursue justice for the victims, and that will be his true legacy.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.