Karim Khan was accused of serious sexual crimes by an assistant less than 3 weeks before his surprise announcement of the cancelation of a fact-finding trip to Israel and the seeking of warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, raising concerns the warrants are meant to protect him.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would file arrest warrants against Israeli leaders less than three weeks after ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan was accused of sexual assault, the Wall Street Journal reported.
According to the report, Khan responded to the international pressure to criminalize Israel’s response to the October 7 massacre by taking out his frustrations on his staff. When one of Khan’s assistants asked him to ease up in his treatment of her, he summoned her to his suite at the Millennium Hilton hotel near the UN’s New York headquarters.
The staffer, a Malaysian woman in her 30s, testified that Khan sexually assaulted her and prevented her from leaving, and act she said was part of a pattern of similar actions.
The alleged victim said that she did not come forward at first because she was afraid of losing her job and of not being able to pay the medical bills for her mother, who was suffering from cancer. In addition, she feared retaliation from Khan.
Two and a half weeks after he learned of the accusations against him, Khan canceled a fact-finding mission to Israel and announced that he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in May 2024. In an unusual move, the ICC prosecutor announced the warrants during an interview with CNN rather than in an official setting, despite receiving advice from fellow prosecutors not to make the announcement in such a manner.
The timing and unusual manner of the announcement of the warrants against the Israeli leaders has caused concern that the warrants were connected to the accusations against Khan, whose shift against Israel has shorn up his support among the parties that criticized him in the early days of the war between Hamas and Israel.
While Khan has denied both the accusations of sexual assault and any connection between the accusations and the warrants, the report found that he used the investigation against Israel in an attempt to silence his accuser, who had supported the ICC’s investigation of the Jewish State. He is alleged to have told her, “Think about the Palestinian arrest warrants.”
In his announcement, Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he was seeking to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, for “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Khan said that the charges against the Israeli leaders include: “Causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”
