International Court Prosecutor Who Indicted Netanyahu Faces Sexual Misconduct Allegation

After months of inaction and whispered rumors of a brewing scandal, a anonymous account on X called @ICC_Leaks Last week he began to bring some of the allegations to light.

Israel’s allies in the US Congress have also seized on the potential scandal. Senator Lindsey Graham is seeking records on whether misconduct allegations played any role in Khan’s decision in May to cancel an aide’s planned visit to Israel and move forward with war crimes charges.

“Another cloud, a moral one, hangs over Prosecutor Khan’s abrupt decision to abandon engagement with Israel and seek arrest warrants,” the South Carolina Republican wrote in a letter to the court’s oversight authority.

Khan, who is 54 and married with two children, said in a statement that the allegations were “not true” and that in 30 years of scandal-free investigative work he has always supported victims of sexual harassment and abuse.

Khan added that he would be willing, if asked, to cooperate with any investigation, and said it was essential that any allegations “be heard, examined and given a proper process.”

Without directly naming any entity, he noted that both he and the court have been subject in recent months to “a wide range of attacks and threats,” some also directed at his wife and family. Khan’s office declined to provide details because the incidents are under investigation.

Under Khan, the ICC has become more assertive in fighting crimes against humanity, war crimes and related atrocities. Along the way, he has joined an ever-growing list of enemies.

Last September, after the opening of an investigation into Russian atrocities in Ukraine, the court suffered a debilitating cyber attack that left staff unable to work for weeks. He also hired an intern who was later penalized accused in the United States of being a Russian spy.

Israel has also been waging its own influence campaign since the ICC recognized Palestine as a member and in 2015 opened a preliminary investigation into what the court called “the situation in the State of Palestine.”

London’s The Guardian newspaper and several Israeli media outlets. reported this summer that Israel’s intelligence agencies over the past decade have allegedly targeted senior ICC officials, including placing Khan’s predecessor under surveillance and showing up at her home with envelopes full of cash to discredit her.

Netanyahu himself, in the days before Khan’s announcement of the war crimes charges, called on the world’s democracies to “ use all the means at your disposal ” to block the court from what he called an “outrage of historic proportions.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry referred AP’s questions about the case to the Prime Minister’s office, which did not respond. The US State Department declined to discuss the matter, but said in a statement that it “takes any allegation of sexual harassment seriously and we would expect the court to do the same.”

The Dutch Foreign Ministry and several Dutch lawmakers have called for an investigation into whether the Israeli embassy has been carrying out covert activities against the ICC.

Khan, a British international lawyer, had a long history defending some of the world’s most ruthless strongmen – including former Liberian president Charles Taylor and the son of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi – before being elected in 2021 in secret ballot to become chief prosecutor.

The Rome Statute that established the court came into force in 2002, with a mandate to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, but only when national courts do not launch their own investigations. Neither the United States, Israel nor Russia are among the 124 member countries that recognize the court’s authority, although their citizens can be charged with crimes committed in countries that are members of the ICC.

Still, Washington welcomed Khan’s election, especially after he took steps to “deprioritize” an investigation opened by his predecessor into abuses by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan.

Khan also broadened the court’s focus, bringing criminal charges for the first time against people outside Africa. He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of kidnapping children in Ukraine and opened an investigation into Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for its repression against protesters.

“He is by far the most professional jurist the court has had in its short history,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “He is articulate, sophisticated with the media and has extensive courtroom experience working to the highest standards of evidence.”