ICC prosecutor behind Netanyahu arrest warrants steps aside amid sexual misconduct probe

JERUSALEM—The scandal-plagued prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been compelled to step down, pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, the court announced Friday. Khan has categorically denied the allegations against him. 

Fox News Digital sent detailed press queries to the ICC and embattled prosecutor Karim Khan on Thursday, asking if the world court planned to oust him and whether he would resign.

The Associated Press reported the court said in a statement that Khan on Friday ″communicated his decision to take leave until the end″ of an external investigation that will be carried by the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the U.N. internal watchdog.  

That same report said that women's rights groups welcomed the move, who had called for him to step down after the allegations emerged last year, but Khan initially resisted leaving.

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Last year, an Associated Press investigation found that two court employees in whom the alleged victim confided came forward with the accusation in May. That was a few weeks before Khan sought arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders on war crimes charges.

Israel has been waging an existential war against the U.S.-designated terrorist movement, Hamas, since it invaded the Jewish state on October 7, 2023 and slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including American citizens.

Eugene Kontorovich, a legal expert and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told Fox News Digital, "Removing Khan is not enough. The entire tribunal, including his prosecutorial team and judges, enabled his blood libel. The scandal points to the inherent defects of the institution - a total lack of accountability."

The Associated Press reported that two co-workers in whom the woman confided at the ICC’s headquarters at The Hague reported Khan’s alleged misconduct in May to the court’s independent watchdog, which says it interviewed the woman and ended its inquiry after five days when she opted against filing a formal complaint. Khan himself wasn't questioned at the time.

While the court’s watchdog could not determine wrongdoing, it nonetheless urged Khan in a memo to minimize contact with the woman to protect the rights of all involved and safeguard the court’s integrity.

Khan has been facing increasing pressure on multiple fronts. U.S. President Donald Trump filed sanctions against Khan in February in relation to his Israel warrants. The sanctions are hampering work on a broad array of investigations at the court.

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The Wall Street Journal reported Khan’s decision to prosecute Netanyahu and the country’s former Defense Minister raised "questions about whether Khan was aiming to protect himself from the sexual-assault allegations. The day before announcing the warrant application, Khan abruptly canceled a trip to Israel and Gaza that he had previously said was important to make his decision." 

The Wall Street Journal reported the ICC employee’s graphic account of Khan allegedly raping the woman and sexually molesting her.

Lawyers for Khan from the firm, Carter-Ruck Solicitors, told Fox News Digital on Friday that, "Our client does wish to make clear, however, that it is categorically untrue that he has engaged in sexual misconduct of any kind."

Khan’s lawyers continued, "Our client is cooperating fully and transparently with the investigation by the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) in relation to allegations that have been raised against him."

With respect to information that Khan exploited the ICC to save his own skin by charging Israeli leaders, Carter-Ruck Solicitors said "The decision to announce that arrest warrants for individuals including Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gallant and leaders of Hamas, our client also wishes to make clear that the fact that ICC Judges approved the applications for those warrants underscores that the evidence on which they were based met the rigorous legal threshold required under the Rome Statute. Suggestions that the Prosecutor’s applications were linked to, or precipitated by, unrelated allegations of misconduct are totally false."

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Kontorovich said about the ICC case against Israeli leaders: "This fundamentally undermines the integrity of the case, and in a normal judicial system, would lead not just to these charges being thrown out, but cast doubt on all his prior cases."

He continued that "Given that the ICC has only managed to secure final convictions against six people for atrocity crimes in its quarter-century of existence, a massive scandal of prosecutorial misconduct should be grounds for shutting down the institution, not just removing the prosecutor."

When asked if the ICC plans to rescind the arrest warrants against the Israeli leaders, Fadi El-Abdallah, the spokesman for the ICC, told Fox News Digital that "As there is a pending request, I can’t offer comment or speculation on its outcome."

El-Abdallah referred Fox News Digital to Khan’s media team regarding questions related to his alleged sexual misconduct and allegations he damaged the integrity of the world court.

Israel asked the ICC to withdraw the arrest warrants in early May. 

Fox News Digital previously reported the British chief prosecutor, Khan, published an academic essay in 2013 that suggested his own current effort to arrest Netanyahu would be a travesty of justice because the court cannot provide due process to defendants. 

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"Make no mistake: the problem is bigger than Khan. They’re throwing him under the bus to protect the institution and salvage their campaign against Israel. But the rot runs deep. This was never about justice, it was always about a political agenda," Hillel Neuer, a lawyer and UN Watch Executive Director, told Fox News Digital.

A spokesperson for the United Nations told Fox News Digital that it does not comment on the ICC because it is an independent judicial body.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.