ICC members set to vote on removing Karim Khan after barring defense team
-->
On 24 July, the 125 member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) will vote in a secret ballot at the UN headquarters in New York on whether to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan due to alleged misconduct.Khan's lawyers, Tayab Ali and Sareta Ashraph, said the president of the Assembly of States Parties \u201chas closed every formal channel\u201d through which they could address the body, and asked member states not to meet with them. \u201cThe right under the rules to address you on the substantive decision of misconduct has been flatly denied to us,\u201d they said in a statement.The lawyers said they were barred from answering the case put to the assembly or correcting errors in the material before it, \u201cof which there are many,\u201d and that they were writing openly, despite confidentiality obligations, because no other route remained. They added, \u201cWe know of no court or tribunal in any proper and fair legal system that bars a person facing the gravest professional sanction from being heard.\u201d\ud83d\udea8 An urgent message to the States Parties of the Rome Statute ahead of the vote on 24 July from the Prosecutor\u2019s legal team. We act for Karim A. A. Khan KC, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. On Friday, at a Special Session of the Assembly of States Parties,\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/rne7o9VGom— Tayab Ali (@tayab_ali_) July 21, 2026 An absolute majority of 63 states is required to remove him, and the result is expected to be made public by the end of the day.Over 140 rights groups denounced the case against Khan, saying it \u201cbreaches basic human rights guarantees\u201d and \u201cdangerously opens the Court to political overreach.\u201dThe groups said the bureau ignored the three judges who unanimously found the evidence did not establish misconduct beyond reasonable doubt, relied on an allegation it never investigated, and lowered the threshold for removing Khan. Two women accusing Khan of sexual abuse appeared in a CNN interview on 16 July. Sarah, his direct special assistant from 2023 to 2024, gave her first public account, saying Khan entered her hotel room during a mission to Bogota and groped her while she pretended to be asleep. The second woman, identified as Patricia, told The Guardian in August 2025 that Khan repeatedly groped and harassed her during her unpaid internship in 2009. Ashraph had told CNN that neither account was new and that Khan denies both \u201cin their entirety.\u201dThe vote follows a sustained US campaign against the court. On 13 July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would dismantle the ICC \u201cbrick by brick, if necessary,\u201d announcing a whole-of-government campaign of travel bans, visa revocations, and sanctions to disable the court.RUBIO WARNS ICC: \u201cWe Will Teach the ICC the Full Meaning of American Resolve\u201d pic.twitter.com\/rzKFS3blyc— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) July 13, 2026 The US has sanctioned Khan and more than a dozen ICC officials since February 2025, when Trump signed an executive order in response to the Gaza war crimes warrants, targeting the judges who authorized the warrants, those who rejected Israel's appeal against the Gaza investigation, both deputy prosecutors, and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.The US campaign began after the court issued arrest warrants in November 2024 against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Minister of War Yoav Gallant for their leading roles in the genocide in Gaza.","image_caption":"(Photo credit: ICC official photo)"}}],"blob":{"id":90275,"url":"https:\/\/thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com\/public\/articles\/d5cfe14e-875a-11f1-869a-00163e02c055.webp","type":"file","size":75039,"ext":"","name":"d5cfe14e-875a-11f1-869a-00163e02c055.webp","directory":"articles","sort_number":0,"alt_text":null,"image_caption":null,"created_at":"2026-07-24 15:26:02","updated_at":"2026-07-24 15:26:02"},"mobile_blob":null,"debates":[]}"<br>:most-popular-articles="[{"id":38954,"language_id":1,"arabic_reference_id":null,"slug":"israel-builds-massive-barrier-inside-gaza-to-partition-strip-beyond-yellow-line","is_hidden":0,"is_popular":0,"is_featured":0,"is_slide_bar":0,"is_topped_bar":1,"sort_number":0,"category_id":4,"author_id":9,"creator_id":294,"initial_creator_id":141,"section_id":null,"blob_id":90102,"mobile_blob_id":null,"thumbnail_id":null,"created_at":"2026-07-22 19:33:21","updated_at":"2026-07-23 17:52:12","views":3850,"scheduled_at":"2026-07-22 21:15:00","published_at":"2026-07-22 21:15:00","reference_id":null,"edit_lock":0,"is_draft":0,"is_arabic":0,"second_author_id":null,"reference_local_article_id":null,"poll_id":null,"is_featured_topped_bar":0,"category":{"id":4,"slug":"news","is_hidden":0,"sort_number":4,"is_slide_bar":0,"is_topped_bar":1,"created_at":"2023-06-26...