The executive body of the International Criminal Court has altered the voting procedure for the potential removal of Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, collapsing what was to have been a two-stage vote into a single motion that lawyers say lowers the threshold for his dismissal, Middle East Eye can reveal. The change was approved by a majority of the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties at a meeting on Monday, June 30, and came as a surprise to Khan’s legal team, which told MEE it had received no notification of the decision. The full Assembly of States Parties is scheduled to vote on Khan’s fate at a special session at the United Nations headquarters in New York on July 24.
Under the bureau’s own procedures paper dated March 6, 2026, seen by MEE, member states were to vote first on whether serious misconduct had occurred, a finding that required a two-thirds majority of those present and voting. Only if that threshold was cleared would a second vote on removal follow, which under Article 46 of the Rome Statute requires an absolute majority of all 125 ASP member states — at least 63 votes — to succeed.
Under the new arrangement, states will instead cast a single vote on a combined motion approving both the finding of serious misconduct and the removal of the prosecutor. Khan’s lawyers at the London-based firm Carter-Ruck said the change eliminates the separate determination by the full Assembly on whether misconduct occurred at all, and reduces the threshold for that finding from a two-thirds majority to a bare absolute majority.
“Altering the rules of a named individual’s case partway through, to his disadvantage and without notice to him, raises the most serious questions of lawfulness and of basic fairness, and we would say so whoever the individual concerned happened to be,” Carter-Ruck said in a statement provided to MEE.
The procedural shift is particularly significant given what preceded it. A three-judge panel appointed by the bureau to review the findings of a United Nations investigation into complaints against Khan concluded unanimously in March that the facts presented “do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework.” Belgian judge Paul Lemmens, writing separately, said he had “serious doubts” about whether the evidence could meet the required standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, given “totally contradictory accounts, without any witnesses to the alleged misconduct.”
The bureau set that panel opinion aside. A majority of bureau members voted in June to proceed despite the judges’ conclusion, finding by a two-thirds majority that Khan had committed “serious misconduct.” MEE has seen the confidential bureau decision of June 8, which states that the evidence “establishes beyond reasonable doubt” that Khan “engaged in a sexual relationship” with the complainant, and argues that “in the context of that power imbalance a sexual relationship could never be appropriate.”
That framing is itself disputed. The investigation was authorised to examine allegations of “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” — non-consensual behaviour — and three allegations of retaliation, on which the bureau made no finding. The bureau’s conclusion of a consensual but inappropriate relationship represents a recharacterisation of the original allegations, according to Khan’s lawyers. “One cannot square the circle of an unproven, strongly denied allegation of non-consensual sexual misconduct, by replacing it with one of a consensual relationship that has never been alleged,” they told MEE. “No such allegation was put to the Prosecutor in the notice of allegations or at any stage of the investigation.”
Khan has strenuously denied the existence of any sexual relationship with the complainant. The complainant’s own account centred on allegations of non-consensual conduct. She has cooperated with the UN investigation and told MEE previously that she could not comment on matters relating to the case because of confidentiality obligations.
Fourteen of the 21 bureau member states that voted to pursue Khan’s suspension have been identified by MEE as: Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Ecuador, Finland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland. Four voted against — Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Uganda. Bolivia, Bosnia and South Africa abstained.
The ASP secretariat declined to comment on what it described as confidential proceedings.
International and political context
Khan, a British barrister, was elected ICC chief prosecutor in February 2021. His office has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Myanmar and Taliban officials. Those warrants prompted retaliatory US sanctions from the Trump administration in February 2025. The sanctions were subsequently expanded to target two deputy prosecutors, eight ICC judges involved in the Palestine and Afghanistan investigations, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, and Palestinian NGOs that had submitted evidence to the court.
Russia, which is not an ICC member, issued an arrest warrant for Khan and opened a criminal trial against him in absentia. Israel used the misconduct allegations in its appeal before the ICC seeking dismissal of the investigation into Israeli war crimes, arguing Khan had issued the Netanyahu arrest warrant to distract from his personal conduct. The court has not yet ruled on that appeal.
The Wall Street Journal editorialised that the complaint raised questions about whether Khan sought the Israeli warrants to divert attention from his own behaviour, a line of argument his lawyers describe as a coordinated campaign to discredit the court’s Palestine jurisdiction. Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Andreas Kravik, said publicly in June that ICC member states should respect the judges’ panel report on the prosecutor.
Background
The complaints against Khan were first raised within his office in 2024. An internal ICC investigation was opened and closed when the complainant declined to cooperate. A second internal inquiry met the same result. The ASP then commissioned the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services to conduct a full investigation. Both the complainant and Khan cooperated. UN investigators spent more than a year gathering evidence before submitting a 150-page report and 5,000 pages of supporting material to the judicial panel in December 2025. The panel examined the material for nearly three months before issuing its unanimous March 2026 opinion that no misconduct had been established. The bureau voted to disregard that opinion weeks later.
What happens next
The special session of the ASP is scheduled for July 24 at UN headquarters in New York. Under the new single-vote procedure, 125 member states will be asked to vote on a combined motion covering both the misconduct finding and removal. Khan’s lawyers have flagged the change as potentially unlawful and said it was made without notice to their client, signalling a legal challenge is likely before or after the vote. Redacted copies of the UN investigation report, the judges’ panel opinion and other submissions have been distributed to all 125 member states under strict confidentiality ahead of the New York session. The ICC’s ASP secretariat has not indicated whether it will respond to Carter-Ruck’s legal objections before the vote takes place.
