When the Judge Is Punished Instead of the Perpetrator: The Removal of Karim Khan, the Prosecutor Who Sought Netanyahu's Arrest

On a cold winter day in Paris, a soft-spoken, meticulously articulate man sat in my office. He belonged to that rare breed of lawyers who never raise their voices because they have no need to. At the time, Karim Ahmad Khan was at the height of an exceptional legal career: a British lawyer of Pakistani origin who had served before the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. He had appeared both as a prosecutor and as defense counsel—a dual role that very few have managed to combine with integrity. That same year, he was appointed to lead the United Nations Investigative Team tasked with examining the crimes committed by ISIS in Iraq.

What has remained with me from that meeting is neither his office nor his title, but a conviction he expressed without any display or affectation: international justice must either apply equally to everyone, or it is not justice at all.

Three years later, the States Parties elected him Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. I called to congratulate him on his new position, and he was, as always, gracious and courteous.

Then, just two days ago, on July 24, 2026, those same States voted to remove him from office.

What Exactly Happened?

In November 2024, a Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza, alongside a warrant for a Hamas leader.

The request for those warrants had been submitted by Khan in May of the same year. It marked the first time in the Court's history that it had issued an arrest warrant for the head of government of a state that is a major ally of the United States and the West.

The price was swift.

The United States imposed sanctions on the Prosecutor himself, followed by sanctions targeting judges and officials of the Court. A public diplomatic campaign was launched to undermine the institution, reaching its peak this month when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the Court's personnel in terms unworthy of diplomatic language.

Meanwhile, a parallel network was taking shape to ensnare the fiercest prosecutor in the Court's history.

A staff member of the Court filed a complaint alleging sexual misconduct. From the very first day, Khan's Office categorically denied the allegations and continues to do so.

The problem is not that an investigation was conducted.

The problem lies in ignoring its outcome.

That is the heart of the matter, and it is on this point alone that any condemnation should rest—not on questioning a woman who came forward with a complaint, for that is her protected right, but on the manner in which the States Parties handled the case.

First

The United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigated the matter for thirteen months and submitted a report accompanied by thousands of pages of evidence.

Second

The Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties itself established an independent judicial panel composed of three distinguished judges:

Leona Theron of the Constitutional Court of South Africa;

Paul Lemmens of Belgium; and

Seymour Panton of Jamaica,

to evaluate that evidence.

The judges spent approximately three months examining the material and issued their report on March 9, 2026.

They unanimously concluded that the facts established by the investigation did not substantiate misconduct or a breach of duty under the applicable legal framework.

One of the judges even appended a separate opinion expressing serious doubts regarding the allegations.

Third

Here lies the true heart of the story.

The Bureau did not accept that conclusion.

Within weeks, a majority of its members voted to disregard the findings of the very panel that the Bureau itself had appointed. On June 8, they referred the matter to the Assembly of States Parties for a vote, while immediately suspending the Prosecutor from his duties.

On July 24, 82 out of the 125 States Parties voted in favor of removing Karim Khan from office.

According to the defense team, Khan was never formally confronted with the specific allegation upon which the removal decision was ultimately based, nor was he afforded an opportunity to respond to it.

The defense further states that a formal request for an oral hearing—during which testimony could be examined and credibility assessed—had been submitted as early as July 2025, yet it was never granted.

A Fabricated Process

Ben Swanson, the former Deputy Director of the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services, described what occurred as a major procedural fabrication.

More troubling still, a political executive body substituted its own judgment for that of independent judges in assessing disputed evidence.

This is precisely what Sir James Eadie warned against in a legal opinion issued in late 2025, when he argued that it is fundamentally unacceptable for an investigator to assume the roles of both prosecutor and judge, and that factual determinations must not be left to political bodies.

Why Does This Decision Extend Beyond Karim Khan?

No one outside the case file can claim with certainty to know what transpired between two individuals behind closed doors.

What every fair-minded defender of the rule of law can state with certainty is this:

The institution established to prosecute the gravest crimes under the highest standards of fairness applied to its own Prosecutor a lower standard than the one it applies to any defendant appearing before it.

This is not a defense of a man.

It is a defense of a principle.

For the principle that falls today in The Hague is the very one that tomorrow will be invoked against victims:

If a political body may disregard the judgment of independent judges whenever it finds that judgment inconvenient, then the very idea of international justice has been reduced to an instrument of power politics.

The cruelest irony remains this:

The man was removed from office, while the arrest warrants he sought remain in force—and none of them has been executed.

Regrettably, the prosecutor has fallen, while the accused remain at liberty.

I do not write from the position of someone seeking to exonerate or condemn in a matter that has never been fully adjudicated before a competent court.

I write from the position of someone who refuses to accept that the process leading to this removal should become the model by which international justice judges itself.

The man who sat in my office in Paris in 2018 believed that law is stronger than politics.

Perhaps what has happened to him is the greatest test of that conviction.

Despite everything, I hope he was not mistaken.