Karim Khan’s accuser, a lawyer from Malaysia, breaks silence on alleged sexual misconduct at ICC

Amanda Taub, Jeanna Smialek

The woman who accused the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of sexual misconduct began speaking publicly this week, just before the official faces a vote over whether he will keep his job.

The prosecutor, Karim Khan, has denied the accusations, which surfaced internally at the court in May 2024 and led to an investigation. The allegations have also brought intense scrutiny on the court as it weighs high-profile cases involving Russia, Israel and the Gaza Strip, where Khan has sought arrest warrants for leaders.

Speaking to The New York Times on July 17, the woman said that she had decided to break her silence this week after seeing Khan make multiple press appearances in recent months.

“There are no good options,” she said. “For two years, I tried to resolve this through the proper institutional processes, no matter what I was going through, I was told that silence was dignity.” But she said that she had concluded that “staying quiet was not safety or protecting the process; it was participating in my own erasure.”

In interviews with investigators through the years and this week with CNN, she described how sexual attention from Khan escalated over time, starting after she began working for him as an assistant in 2023.

She spoke on condition of using only her first name, Sarah, and said abuses took place in an atmosphere of “coercive pressures” in which “no staff member could freely choose.” On July 17, Sarah, a lawyer from Malaysia, declined to describe her allegations in detail.

Dominic Garner, a lawyer for Khan, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on July 17.

He previously told the Times that Khan had denied “every specific allegation of sexual interaction of any kind” throughout the investigation, and that when an ICC executive body found he had sexually harassed her, the decision was “unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence.”

Whether Khan will be removed from his post or allowed to stay on at the International Criminal Court remains to be seen. Under the court’s rules, the chief prosecutor can now be fired only if a majority of the full Assembly of States Parties finds that he committed serious misconduct and votes to remove him from office.

That vote, scheduled for July 24, would be the culmination of a two-year case that has left the court in a precarious state, damaging its credibility and leaving it without a prominent leader at a moment when the institution is already under attack.

The Trump administration this week announced plans to “systematically disable” the court, saying that it threatens Americans by investigating US service members and officials, for instance over their actions in foreign wars.

Officially established in 2002 and based in The Hague, Netherlands, the court has a mission to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes and other serious offences.

Khan, who was elected in 2021 to serve a nine-year term, rose to international prominence as he sought arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hamas officials and Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After the accusations against Khan became public in 2024, the court announced that it had commissioned an independent inquiry. A team from the United Nations investigated the allegations at the court’s request, and their findings were then reviewed by a panel of judges, who evaluated the evidence. Khan went on voluntary leave after the investigation began, and he was later suspended as it proceeded.

The UN investigators said they had found evidence that Khan engaged in “nonconsensual sexual contact” with Sarah, but the judges determined unanimously that the evidence did not meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” legal standard for a finding of misconduct.

The ICC’s executive body later concluded that Khan had sexually harassed her, finding “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the prosecutor had engaged in a sexual relationship with her, and that “in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate”.

On July 17, Sarah said that she was frustrated with rumors online that her allegations were in some way related to Khan’s decisions to seek warrants against high-profile leaders, and with suggestions that she should not have reported his behavior because it might interfere with those cases.

“Victims do not choose the political calendar of their abusers – there is never a right time,” she said.

The ICC did not respond to a request for comment. NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.