One of two women who have accused International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan of sexual assault has come forward publicly for the first time. Both spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. The ICC staff member who came forward, identified only by her first name, Sarah, added a new dimension to allegations of sexual assault of colleagues by Khan that have been discussed for nearly two years. Sarah, a lawyer, worked directly under Khan.
She described his behaviour as “repeated attempts” to achieve his aim, alleging: “It was something that slowly violated my personal boundaries. He tried to intrude on my personal space not only physically but mentally.” Sarah alleged that on one official visit to Colombia, Khan entered her hotel room while she pretended to be asleep, and that he then touched her inappropriately. Khan has denied the allegations from the start.
A second woman, using the pseudonym Patricia, also spoke to Amanpour, with her face hidden during the interview. She first spoke about the matter last year to the UK newspaper The Guardian, having worked with Khan early in his career. Patricia said that during a 2009 internship she had to work at Khan’s home, alleging: “Every time I went there, he came at me. He would grab me, touch me inappropriately, kiss me on the mouth and try to force me to be intimate with him.”
One of Khan’s lawyers, Sareta Ashraf, said the two women’s allegations were nothing new and that Khan had “completely” denied them from the start. Speaking to Amanpour, she said the evidence and facts were quite different from how they had been presented, and noted the interviews were being given just a week before a vote on 24 July, adding that the evidence and testimony shown, and much other important information, had already been sent to member states.
The interviews come at a highly complex and sensitive time for both Khan and the ICC. Next week, ICC member states will hold an unprecedented vote at the UN headquarters in New York on whether to remove Khan from his post. Last month the ICC’s governing body found Sarah’s sexual-assault allegations linked to serious misconduct by Khan, after which it temporarily suspended him and sent the matter to the court’s 125 member states to decide his future. Khan’s lawyers argue the disciplinary process is entirely politically motivated and “irregular.”
Khan was elected in 2021 to head the court’s prosecution division for a nine-year term. The 39-year-old Sarah, a Malaysian national, worked as Khan’s special assistant from 2023 to 2024. When details of her allegations first emerged in late 2024, there was severe turmoil in the chief prosecutor’s office; her identity had been kept secret until now. Khan’s representatives have at times claimed the allegations are part of a conspiracy, linking them to his 2024 application for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then defence minister. But according to documents obtained by The Guardian, the disciplinary investigation found no evidence that any third party, including an intelligence agency, was “using” Sarah. Sarah, a Muslim who still works at the ICC, told Amanpour: “If I were a state intelligence agent, or if there were the slightest suspicion of it, I would have been dismissed long ago. I complained only because of what happened to me, for no other purpose.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report