Sex crimes, Karim Khan and the West’s war on the ICC.
This week, on July 24, the 125 member states of the International Criminal Court will vote on whether to fire Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan. This is far more than a vote about the alleged serious misconduct of one powerful man. It represents an unprecedented institutional crisis for both the ICC and the entire system of international justice on which the Palestinian and other suffering people of the Global South still place hope.
On one hand, the member states will be voting on Khan’s fitness for office given the serious allegations of sexual misconduct levelled against him. Two women charge that Khan used his position of power to sexually pressure them: 'Sarah', a Malaysian lawyer who served as his special assistant at the ICC and alleges he repeatedly subjected her to non-consensual sexual acts, and 'Patricia', who alleges he groped and harassed her as his unpaid intern in 2009, when he was a leading defence lawyer at the court.
On the other hand, the vote is the climax of a high-pressure Israeli and Western effort to unseat Khan after he submitted charges against Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Back in March, a panel of judges tasked with reviewing the charges against Khan unanimously cleared the prosecutor of wrongdoing. In reporting to the ICC's oversight body – the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) – the panel found that allegations against Khan did not establish Karim Khan's misconduct or breach of duty under relevant framework. In the normal course of affairs, this would have been a final determination.
In an unprecedented manoeuvre, the Executive Bureau of the ASP decided to push ahead with Khan’s ouster by setting aside the legal process and turning it into a political vote by the member states.
John Whitbeck, a Paris-based human rights lawyer, said this week: “It has always appeared likely that the charges of sexual misconduct levelled against the ICC's prosecutor were, like those levelled against Julian Assange, levelled in order to punish and neutralise him for daring to disclose inconvenient truths – in Khan's case, for seeking arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and – if he could not be stopped – potentially against other Israelis as well.”
The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations, decried the Karim Khan disciplinary process saying it had ‘failed all parties’ and is ‘corroding’ the court's independence.
In their statement, PHROC said: "Notably, the Bureau, as a political body composed of diplomats, does not have the independence, impartiality or legal expertise to make assessments on the legal characterisation of conduct, nor did it enjoy the same timeframe as the ad hoc Panel to independently examine the two reports and 5,000 pages of evidence."
Let’s be clear: if these states actually cared about justice for victims of sexual violence and the coercion of vulnerable women, men and children to the predation of powerful men, we would have seen the following:
They would have condemned Israel following the 2025 release of the United Nations “Report of the Commission of Inquiry: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023”.
Earlier this month I met Chris Sidoti, a distinguished Australian human rights lawyer. He is a member of the UN Commission which recently released its report, “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023.
“There was the direct targeting of children by snipers and quadcopters, and here the evidence that we collected, subject to all those rigorous tests that we applied, left us in no doubt that children were being explicitly and deliberately targeted,” Sidoti said.
I have written about the sexual depravity committed against Palestinian prisoners at Sde Teiman prison by Israeli forces, including rape-murder. It was brought to the world’s attention by none other than Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the IDF's Military Advocate General (Israel’s top military lawyer/prosecutor). To date she is the only person who has been punished in relation to these sordid events; her crime was to secretly release the footage of Palestinian prisoners being sodomised with metal implements.
Netanyahu referred to the rapists as “our heroic soldiers”. As with all these examples, New Zealand, Australia, UK and all the Usual Suspects mumbled and averted their gaze.
Tearing down the pillars of international law is now a full-on Western project. Just this week, the US Secretary of State declared that Washington will lead a "whole-of-government response" to neutralise the court's jurisdiction. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Marco Rubio said: “Using all the tools at our government's disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC — brick by brick, if necessary."
One should never forget that Karim Khan’s predecessor as Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, was sanctioned, had her US assets frozen, and tormented by the Americans for having prepared a case against US forces for murder, torture and other war crimes in Afghanistan. The case never went ahead; Western impunity was preserved.
Impunity is embedded in US law: the "Hague Invasion Act" is the informal name for the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), a United States federal law passed in 2002. It authorises military action if any US military personnel or government officials face prosecution by the ICC at The Hague, Netherlands.
ICC judges from UK, Peru, France, Benin, Fiji, Slovenia, Georgia and Canada have had their credit cards blocked, their funds seized and their freedom of movement restricted through sanctions imposed by the US and supported by financial institutions, digital platforms and European governments. Imagine that: judges unable to even pay for a meal in a restaurant because they committed the crime of fulfilling their duties under international law to prosecute war crimes. And the response from the Western governments? Silence.
Prof. Yusra Suedi, international law scholar at the University of Manchester, told Pascal Lottaz this week: “I think that the International Criminal Court is a necessary idea. I think the history of geopolitics has indicated that something like this was needed in the world. The ICC’s institutional structure is an important source of hope for many people, especially during these difficult times.”
Lottaz, Associate Professor at Kyoto University, is the host of Neutrality Studies. He makes a very good point about the political value of the international courts: “In an imperfect world, they are a venue and a way to build political pressure.”
All victims of sexual violence should see the predators face justice. A court of law, not a political kangaroo court, is the appropriate venue to determine Karim Khan’s guilt or innocence. I just wish that the US servicemen who recently killed the 165 schoolgirls and staff in Minab, Iran, would face justice. I wish that the US servicemen who raped and murdered hundreds of Vietnamese girls and women at My Lai faced justice. I wish the rapists at Abu Ghraib and all the US black sites faced justice. I wish the thousands of Palestinian hostages suffering today through the living hell of the Israeli gulags could one day be free and see their tormentors face a reckoning before the law.
For the moment, thanks to New Zealand, Australia, the UK, US and all the other state sponsors of criminality, we do not live in such a world. May that day come soon.
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts solidarity.co.nz.
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