Members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) voted to remove Karim Khan as chief prosecutor over alleged sexual misconduct.

Elected the ICC’s third prosecutor in 2021, Khan was suspended last month. The decision to dismiss him was adopted with 82 votes in favor.

The court’s oversight body found in June that he had committed a “serious dereliction of duty and serious misconduct” by engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a junior ICC staff member and trying to prevent him from pursuing his complaint.

Khan has repeatedly denied all allegations against him.

His lawyers have described his suspension as “unlawful, procedurally unfair and not supported by evidence.”

This process goes beyond the fate of a single prosecutor and could reshape the world’s only permanent war crimes court.

The misconduct investigation has put the institution in the spotlight, intensified divisions within it and has run alongside an unprecedented campaign to weaken, and indeed dismantle, the ICC as a whole.

The fear among its supporters is that the court will emerge weakened and less able to confront the most serious global threats.

Khan, a prominent British lawyer, has been on voluntary leave to fight the allegations since May 2025. He remains suspended from practicing law in the UK, after the Bar Standards Board imposed a provisional ban while it conducts its own investigation.

He was unable to attend the vote, held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, because he is prohibited from entering the United States under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration over the ICC investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israeli officials in Gaza.

Regardless of his dismissal, the controversy is unlikely to end there.

The decision follows a very delicate process that has left the court under intense scrutiny.

In May 2024, a third party reported to the ICC allegations that Khan had engaged in sexual misconduct involving a female staff member.

The court’s Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM) opened an investigation, but the case was later closed after the alleged victim refused to participate.

Critics of the process argued that the investigation had been mishandled, undermining trust in the IOM.

Investigators ultimately said there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations.

A second referral was made in October 2024. The matter was then transferred to the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which conducted a broader investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse of authority.

That investigation ran from November 2024 to December 2025 and generated more than 5,000 pages of evidence and testimony.

The OIOS findings were subsequently reviewed by a three-judge panel tasked with advising whether Khan’s conduct constituted serious misconduct, less serious misconduct, or no misconduct.

The allegations have developed during a period of exceptional pressure on the ICC, coinciding with broader political tensions.

The United States imposed sanctions on Khan after he sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes related to the war in Gaza.

Washington’s attitude toward the court in general has become increasingly hostile in recent years.

Earlier this month, the United States launched a new “whole-of-government” campaign to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick” in what it calls a threat to American sovereignty, promising visa bans, asset freezes and diplomatic pressure on allies to withdraw from the court or reject its jurisdiction over their nationals.

The United States, Russia and Israel are not members of the ICC. However, the court can exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed by its nationals on the territory of ICC member states.