{"id":35145,"date":"2026-07-25T14:43:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=35145"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:43:06","slug":"who-is-karim-khan-the-barrister-at-the-centre-of-the-iccs-internal-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=35145","title":{"rendered":"Who is Karim Khan, the barrister at the centre of the ICC’s internal crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Khan announced arrest warrants in May 2024 for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"international<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan talks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands January 16, 2025. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Karim Khan became one of the best-known international prosecutors in May \u200b2024 when he announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, inserting the International Criminal Court into a confrontation with \u200cthe United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ICC member states dismissed Khan<\/a> on Friday over allegations of sexual misconduct<\/a>, two diplomatic sources told Reuters<\/em>, in a vote at United Nations headquarters in New York. He has long faced criticism and endured political wrangling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first turn in the international media limelight was as a defence lawyer during the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the opening day of the trial in \u200b2007, Khan dramatically walked out of the courtroom against judges’ orders after announcing Taylor had fired him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born in Edinburgh to a Pakistani dermatologist and a \u200bBritish nurse, Khan, 56, studied law in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spent his early career in the UK prosecution service before becoming a legal \u2060adviser for the Office of the Prosecutor for the United Nations ad hoc war crimes tribunals for both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda between 1997 and 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khan \u200bsubsequently worked on ICC cases on Kenya, Sudan and Libya. He won dismissal of the case against Kenya’s President William Ruto for post-election violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he was the head of \u200ba UN team investigating Islamic State crimes in Iraq, Khan applied to become ICC prosecutor. An outsider candidate who did not make the shortlist, he won the job in 2021 after a campaign marked by intense political lobbying by the UK and African states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he took office, he travelled frequently to countries where the ICC was investigating, including Ukraine, Israel and the occupied Palestinian \u200bterritories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, the court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>, which resulted in Khan being convicted in a 2025 in-absentia trial in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khan, who is a \u200bmember of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, had made pursuing perpetrators of sexual crimes and defending the rights of children focal points in his time as ICC prosecutor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his speeches, Khan often \u200cstressed that \u2060he seeks to apply the law equally and fairly across all situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backlash over Netanyahu Warrants<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 2024, Khan announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“No one can act with impunity,” Khan said in a video announcing the warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The warrants, which ICC judges confirmed later that year, caused pushback not only from Israel and the United States but also from some ICC member states such as Italy and Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US has since imposed sanctions on \u200b11 court officials, including Khan, and on \u200bseveral non-governmental organisations working with the \u2060court on the Gaza case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid the pressure on the court and Khan over the decision to seek arrest warrants, news broke in October 2024 that a junior lawyer in Khan’s office had alleged sexual misconduct by Khan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khan has denied the allegations but \u200bwent on leave in May 2025 because he said media scrutiny made it hard to focus on his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June \u200b8, the executive bureau \u2060of the ICC’s governing body \u2014 made up of diplomats of member countries \u2014 issued a decision that found Khan had engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a junior lawyer and should be fired, documents seen by Reuters<\/em> said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent interviews, Khan and his lawyers have implied the misconduct allegations could be part of a political pressure campaign by Israel and its \u2060allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He sought \u200bto scapegoat Israel in an attempt to divert attention from his own misconduct,” said Israel’s ambassador to \u200bthe UN, Danny Danon. “The international community rejected that cynical attempt today.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UN investigators dismissed suggestions that the victim was linked to foreign intelligence agencies, according to ICC documents seen by\u00a0Reuters<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ICC member states voted on Friday \u200bto dismiss him, triggering an election for a new prosecutor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France, the Netherlands, and Norway have publicly stated that they support his removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference Link:- https:\/\/tribune.com.pk\/story\/2620079\/who-is-karim-khan-the-barrister-at-the-centre-of-the-iccs-internal-crisis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Khan announced arrest warrants in May 2024 for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan talks during an interview with Reuters in The Hague, Netherlands January 16, 2025. Photo: Reuters Karim Khan became one of the best-known international prosecutors in May \u200b2024 when he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[25457,5648,1510,10849,32414,32415,8847,24441],"class_list":["post-35145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-icc-2","tag-icj-3","tag-israel-2","tag-justice-2","tag-karim-khan","tag-might-is-right","tag-netanyahu-3","tag-war-criminal-3","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35146,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35145\/revisions\/35146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}