THE HAGUE – A United Nations watchdog has been selected to lead an external probe into allegations of sexual misconduct against the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, The Associated Press learned Tuesday. The move will likely generate conflict of interest concerns owing to the prosecutor’s wife’s past work for the oversight body.
Chief prosecutor Karim Khan provided updates on the court's politically sensitive investigations into war crimes and atrocities in Ukraine, Gaza and Venezuela among other conflict areas during the institution's annual meeting this week in The Hague, Netherlands.
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But hanging over the gathering of the ICC's 124 member states are allegations against Khan himself.
An AP investigation in October found that at the same time the ICC was readying a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Khan was facing internal accusations that he tried to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship and groped her against her will over a period of several months.
The Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute, which oversees the ICC, previously announced an external probe into the allegations but hadn’t said who it would select to conduct the probe.
At this week’s meeting, Päivi Kaukoranta, a Finnish diplomat currently heading the ICC’s oversight body, told delegates that she has settled on the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services, two diplomats told the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.
Two respected human rights group last month already expressed concern about the possible selection of the U.N. because Khan’s wife, a prominent human rights attorney, worked at the agency in Kenya in 2019 and 2020 investigating sexual harassment.
The International Federation for Human Rights and Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice, in a joint statement, said Khan should be suspended while the probe is being carried out and called for “thoroughly vetting the chosen investigative body, firm, or institution to ensure it is free from conflicts of interest and possesses demonstrated expertise.”
What they described as Khan’s “close relationship” with the U.N. agency deserved added scrutiny, the two groups said.
“We strongly recommend ensuring that these concerns are openly and transparently addressed before assigning the mandate to the OIOS,” the two organizations said.
Kaukoranta declined to comment when asked about the investigation by the AP on Tuesday on the sidelines of the annual meeting. The U.N. and Khan’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The accusations against Khan surfaced when two court employees in whom the alleged victim confided came forward with the accusation in May, a few weeks before Khan sought arrest warrants against Netanyahu, his defense minister and three Hamas leaders on war crimes charges. A three-judge panel last month signed off on those charges for the Israelis and the sole remaining Hamas leader whose death from Israel's bombing campaign hasn't been confirmed.
AP reported that Khan traveled frequently with the woman after transferring her to his office from another department at the ICC’s headquarters. During one foreign trip, Khan allegedly asked the woman to rest with him on a hotel bed and then “sexually touched her,” according to whistleblower documents shared with the court’s watchdog and seen by the AP. Later, he came to her room at 3 a.m. and knocked on the door for 10 minutes.
Other allegedly nonconsensual behavior cited in the documents included locking the door of his office and sticking his hand in her pocket. He also allegedly asked her on several occasions to go on a vacation together.
After the two co-workers reported the alleged behavior, the court’s internal watchdog interviewed the woman but she opted against filing a complaint due to her distrust of the watchdog, according to the AP investigation. Khan was never questioned and the watchdog’s inquiry was closed within five days.
Although the 900-employee ICC has long had a “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual harassment, an outside review of the court’s inner-workings in 2020 found an unacceptable level of predatory behavior by male bosses, a lack of women in senior positions and inadequate mechanisms for dealing with complaints and protecting whistleblowers.
“There is a general reluctance, if not extreme fear, among many staff to report any alleged act of misconduct or misbehavior” by a senior official, the experts concluded in their 348-page report. “The perception is that they are all immune.”
Although the ICC’s policies have been updated since the report, a 2024 internal reported obtained by AP showed that 30% of respondents to a staff survey reported they had experienced discrimination, abuse or harassment in the previous 12 months.
While the court’s watchdog could not determine wrongdoing, it nonetheless urged Khan in a memo to minimize contact with the woman to protect the rights of all involved and safeguard the court’s integrity.
Complicating any truth-seeking investigation have been attempts by Israel and others to undermine the court's credibility.
Under Khan, the ICC has become more assertive in combating crimes against humanity and along the way it has added to a growing list of enemies.
Last September, following the opening of a probe into Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the court suffered a debilitating cyberattack that left staff unable to work for weeks. It also hired an intern who was later criminally charged in the U.S. with being a Russian spy.
Israel has also been waging its own influence campaign ever since the ICC recognized Palestine as a member and in 2015 opened a preliminary investigation into what the court referred to as “the situation in the State of Palestine.”
London’s The Guardian newspaper and several Israeli news outlets reported this summer that Israel’s intelligence agencies for the past decade have allegedly targeted senior ICC staff, including putting Khan’s predecessor under surveillance and showing up at her house with envelopes stuffed with cash to discredit her.
Netanyahu himself, in the days leading up to Khan’s announcement of war crimes charges, called on the world’s democracies “to use all the means at their disposal” to block the court from what he called an “outrage of historic proportions.”
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Goodman reported from Miami.