The euphemism du jour at The Hague is that the embattled Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, has taken a leave of absence. In reality, he’s stepping aside — temporarily, ICC sources say — as a United Nations (UN) investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct appears to be drawing to a close.
For the ICC, this isn’t just a private embarrassment but an institutional implosion in slow motion. This is because Khan has had a heavy hand in several of the ICC’s most high-profile prosecutions, decisions that have not come without significant repercussions for the court itself.
He spearheaded the controversial investigation into former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, much to the applause of Western liberals and the consternation of Duterte’s supporters in Manila. But if justice is to be truly blind — and if international law is to have any semblance of moral authority — Khan, the ICC’s hatchet man, must not be robed in hypocrisy.
Khan is facing serious and multiple accusations that the ICC and the UN should consider locking him up in the very facility where they are keeping Duterte, who just got elected mayor of Davao City via a landslide. Or should he be thrown to the gulag? Just a thought.
Two ICC staff members had accused Khan of coercing a female aide into sexual acts and of openly groping her (what a lascivious animal, if true) during official trips. Initially, the complaint didn’t move forward, as the alleged victim declined formal proceedings. Luckily, the press came to the rescue and exposed the stench of something being buried.
The intrepid journalists of The Wall Street Journal unearthed testimony given by the aide herself to UN investigators, detailing repeated instances of abuse. For now, two deputy prosecutors are holding the reins while Khan “rests.”
Beyond the sexual misconduct allegations is a deeper vein of criticism: that Khan is a political creature wearing the mask of justice. Critics — ranging from Palestinian victims’ families to international human rights monitors — have accused him of prosecutorial bias and a dangerous habit of caving in to geopolitical pressure, a habit that has already cost the court dearly.
Yet, this same man — under a storm of misconduct allegations, accusations of bias, and a track record of prosecutorial selectivity — remains the author of the ICC’s most controversial and consequential decisions in recent years.
Khan’s greasy fingerprints are all over the arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the deportation of Ukrainian children, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza. And yes, he was central to the ICC probe into Duterte’s war on drugs. These high-profile cases, initiated under a cloud of suspicion surrounding the prosecutor, now risk being tainted by association.
Amid all this, the ICC itself has admitted that it is in the throes of an existential crisis — a situation exacerbated, in no small part, by the very real threat and imposition of US sanctions, a tool Washington has readily employed against the court when its investigations had touched upon American interests or those of its allies.
What is needed now is not just Khan’s resignation, but a reckoning. A total institutional disassociation from his output. The court cannot continue to prosecute Duterte on the back of work done under a prosecutor facing allegations of coercion, bias, and political manipulation. To do so is to poison the well of international justice and hand despots everywhere the perfect defense: hypocrisy, compounded by the perception that the court’s actions are influenced by geopolitical winds and the fear of reprisal.
The ICC must decide what it values more — its current docket or its moral authority. It cannot have both if it continues to pretend that the Khan era can be salvaged. But then, Duterte is too big a fish to fry for an ICC facing irrelevance — partly due to the very sanctions that underscore its vulnerability — to just let go.