The Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court voted on Friday to dismiss Prosecutor Karim Khan, finding him responsible for grave misconduct and a serious breach of his official duties. The closed-door vote, held during an extraordinary session at the United Nations headquarters, saw 82 states support removal — well above the required 63 — while 13 opposed and 15 abstained, according to diplomatic sources. Khan, a British national who had led the office since 2021, was immediately stripped of his post, though he had been suspended since June following the opening of an internal investigation into allegations of sexual assault made by a female member of his staff.

Khan has consistently denied all accusations, and his legal team declared that he will challenge the decision “through all available legal mechanisms,” alleging that the proceedings violated his due-process rights. The complainant, identified publicly as Sarah, a Malaysian-born lawyer, recently told CNN that the encounters involved “an escalation of attempts” and insisted that consent was impossible given “a power imbalance of such magnitude.” The assembly’s resolution determined that his conduct constituted “grave fault,” a threshold that under the court’s statutes permits termination of a prosecutor’s mandate.

Reactions to the decision divided sharply along institutional and geopolitical lines. The United States State Department, whose relations with the court have been strained, issued a statement through a spokesperson describing the ICC as “irremediably corrupt” while also calling Khan a “minor cog” whose departure was welcome. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, celebrated the removal as “long overdue,” repeating accusations that Khan had filed “scandalous arrest warrants” against Israeli leaders to deflect attention from the allegations. Conversely, human-rights organisations including Human Rights Watch stressed that the court must uphold ethical standards without exception while urging governments to refrain from using the episode to undermine the ICC’s independence or its ongoing work.

The dismissal intensifies the leadership vacuum at a court handling multiple politically sensitive investigations. Khan’s tenure was marked by high-profile arrest warrants: against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza war, and against figures in Hamas, Russia, and the Philippines. Washington responded to the Israel-related action by imposing financial sanctions and visa restrictions on court officials. The Assembly of States Parties must now launch an accelerated process to name a successor, with the possibility of an interim appointment to maintain the functioning of the prosecutor’s office while the legal challenges from Khan proceed.