Karim Khan, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court from 2021 until his removal in 2026, ultimately lost his position after an investigation concluded that he had engaged in serious sexual misconduct toward a female subordinate. Khan denied the allegations, insisting they were false and politically motivated. Nevertheless, following an extensive investigation by the ICC's oversight bodies, he was first suspended and then dismissed by an overwhelming vote of the Court's member states—the first sitting ICC prosecutor ever removed from office.
The scandal also cast a cloud over Khan's handling of the ICC's investigation into Israel. According to The Wall Street Journal, after learning in May 2024 that the allegations against him were about to become public, Khan, stunning his own staff, abruptly canceled plans to continue gathering evidence in Israel and Gaza and instead quickly announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas leaders. Whether or not the timing reflected an effort to divert attention from his personal scandal, it undeniably deprived the investigation of additional fact-finding that Khan himself had apparently considered necessary only days earlier. The warrants were later issued by the ICC and remain in effect despite Khan's removal because they are orders of the Court, not of the individual prosecutor.
Anti-Israel activists such as Zohran Mamdani will no doubt continue to invoke those warrants as proof that Netanyahu is a "wanted war criminal." But even putting aside the troubling circumstances surrounding Khan's decision to seek them, the warrants suffer from a separate and fundamental legitimacy problem.
