Karim A. A. Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has been removed from his position, the court’s oversight body announced on Friday, after a 20-month-long investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed a subordinate. The decision came down to an assessment that Mr. Khan had committed “serious misconduct” and a breach of duty. The I.C.C.’s Assembly of States Parties, the governing body that brings together its 125 member nations, made the decision during a session in New York on Friday. A substantial majority of its members, 82, voted to remove Mr. Khan, according to an official statement released Friday afternoon in New York. The decision is one that victims’ rights groups and outside watchdogs have been pushing for, but will leave the criminal court searching for leadership at a difficult moment. (New York Times)
Mr. Khan's lawyers of course had a different view:
Mr Karim Khan KC rejects in the strongest terms the decision announced on 8 June 2026 by the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court. Mr Khan has consistently and unequivocally denied any wrongdoing. Those denials stand. The decision is unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence. It disregards the unanimous conclusion of the independent Judicial Panel appointed by the Bureau itself, which found that the evidence and factual findings by OIOS “did not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant legal framework”. That conclusion should have ended the matter. Instead, an executive and political body has purported to substitute its own assessment for that of the independent judges it appointed. Mr Khan’s legal team will now take all necessary steps to challenge the decision, protect his rights, and ensure that due process is upheld. Further comment will be made in due course. ENDS (here (Mr Khan is represented by Bindmans and Carter-Ruck Solicitors who also stated that further comment might be made in due course))
It is possible to understand this process on one level as focused on gender/sex and their power dynamics in organizational settings. That is an old story, though one that never seems to get old. On another, its semiotics is one that focuses on the realities of institutional mandate drift--when it is valued it is supported as contextually evolutionary; when less so as a usurpation of power toward ends that may be perceived as challenging or threatening. On yet another level one encounters here an increasingly kitsch contest over "control" of the interpretive function of regulatory organs and its politics. It is kitsch because of its performative elements--quantification as legitimization strategies, verb choices as connotative framing, naming and anonymization, and a politics of metaphor. And, of course, all of this tends to be "analyzed" ion the current context of contests over the power of outsiders to use the court to advance their own agendas, and by doing so to leverage the court to augment their power and thus leveraged and augmented to project it against their enemies.
I have prepared a simple analysis of some of the issues surrounding the removal of Mr. Khan from the lens of semiotics. Here is the abstract:
This analysis examines the July 2026 removal of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan by the Assembly of States Parties following a nearly two-year disciplinary process triggered by sexual misconduct allegations from a junior staff member. [1] [2] It surveys the competing arguments surrounding the vote and undertakes a semiotic reading of the surrounding discourse. On substance, proponents of removal point to the OIOS investigation's findings and the Bureau's conclusion of "serious breach of duty and serious misconduct", the complainant's public account of non-consensual conduct, and institutional concerns about a functioning office and staff confidence. [3] [4] [5] Opponents emphasize due-process defects — a judicial panel's contrary finding that was overridden, last-minute procedural changes lowering the removal threshold, and denial of Khan's counsel access to the final session — alongside suspicion that the timing, coinciding with Khan's arrest-warrant applications against Israeli officials and US sanctions against the Court, politicized the process. [6] [7] Palestinian and African civil-society bodies notably withheld judgment on the merits while still warning that politicization was corroding the Court's independence. [8] [9] The semiotic component identifies recurring discursive mechanisms structuring coverage and commentary: the word "political" operating as a mutual delegitimizing label rather than a neutral descriptor; binary framings (witch hunt/stitch-up versus accountability, due process versus overreach) that import pre-existing cultural scripts — #MeToo institutional-abuse narratives versus lawfare-against-prosecutors narratives — to resolve ambiguous facts; crisis and demolition metaphors ("storm," "total disaster," "brick by brick") that alternately diffuse or concentrate agency; asymmetric naming conventions that preserve Khan's institutional titling while the complainant's designation shifts from anonymized labels to a humanizing pseudonym; quantification (vote counts, signatory totals) deployed as symbols of legitimacy independent of the underlying merits; and verb choice in headlines ("dismissed," "ousted," "removed," "fired") that encodes implicit editorial stances toward the outcome's legitimacy. [10] [11] [12] The overall conclusion is that a legally technical dispute has become a contested site where opposing narrative frames compete to fix its meaning through vocabulary, metaphor, and naming choices as much as through legal argument. [13] References: 1-2. ICC member states vote to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan; 3-6, 11. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye; 7, 13. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office; 8-9. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC; 10, 12. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
My analysis and the full statement of Mr. Khan's lawyers follow below.
Background
In July 2026, member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC), sitting as the Assembly of States Parties (ASP), voted to remove Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan from office following a nearly two-year disciplinary process triggered by allegations of sexual misconduct made by a junior staff member in his office. [1] [2] [3] Reports indicate 82 of the ICC's 125 member states voted in favor of removal. [4] The saga began when Khan first denied allegations raised internally in 2024, took voluntary leave in May 2025 pending a UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) investigation, was suspended by the ASP Bureau in June 2026 after it found "serious misconduct" despite a judicial panel's contrary conclusion, and was ultimately voted out at a special session in New York. [5] [6] [7] [8] The process unfolded against the backdrop of Khan's decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders, over the Gaza war, and amid US sanctions on Khan and other ICC officials imposed by the Trump administration. [9] [10]
Arguments Supporting Removal
Proponents of removal emphasize that the disciplinary process, however imperfect, ultimately reached a finding that Khan committed "serious breach of duty and serious misconduct", based on an extensive OIOS investigation and the complainant's account of "months long grooming, psychological coercion, and sexual advances" escalating into non-consensual conduct. [11] [12] The complainant, identified publicly as "Sarah," gave a televised interview standing by her allegations of non-consensual sexual conduct shortly before the vote. [13] A widely circulated legal commentary argues that Khan's fitness for office must be assessed independently of process disputes, contending that the "erosion of confidence" within his own office, the absence of any public assurance to staff who cooperated with investigators that they would face no reprisal, and the practical difficulty of an office functioning under a cloud of leaks and litigation all counsel against his return regardless of how one weighs the underlying facts. [14] [15] That same commentary rejects the argument that procedural irregularities alone should block removal, noting that Article 46(2)(b) of the Rome Statute vests the removal decision in the states parties themselves, not in any advisory panel. [16] [17] A Hague-based diplomat cited by Justice Info captured the institutional argument bluntly: "there was a sense that the office of the prosecutor can no longer function as long as [Khan] is around". [18]
Arguments Opposing Removal
Opponents of removal center their case on due process. Khan's lawyers argued the ASP Bureau's finding "disregards the unanimous conclusion of the independent Judicial Panel appointed by the Bureau itself, which found that the factual findings by OIOS did not establish misconduct or breach of duty," calling the decision "unlawful, procedurally unfair and unsupported by evidence". [19] Khan's legal team also said they were denied accreditation to attend the final ASP session and had "every formal channel" to address the assembly closed to them. [20] Critics point to the Bureau's mid-process decision to collapse a required two-stage vote into one and to lower the removal threshold, changes made without notice to Khan's counsel. [21] More than 160 Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations, while explicitly taking no position on the merits of the allegations, warned that the process "has been reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties" and risks "corroding" the Court's independence. [22] The African Bar Association separately cautioned that a political body departing from "the reasoned conclusions of experienced judges could undermine the institutional credibility of the Court". [23] Former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell characterized the vote as "political" and framed it as "part of a larger offensive against the ICC," pointing to US sanctions and threats following the Netanyahu and Gallant arrest warrant applications. [24] This overlaps with the timing argument: US senators and commentators, and Khan's own supporters, have suggested a connection between the sexual misconduct allegations surfacing and Khan's pursuit of warrants against Israeli officials. [25] [26] A former UN oversight chief reportedly went further, describing Khan as the "victim of massive stitch-up". [27] Separately, a legal opinion by a former International Court of Justice judge warned the ICC could face reinstatement orders and up to €1.5 million in compensation liability from the ILO Administrative Tribunal if Khan successfully appeals his removal. [28]
The justsecurity commentary, while ultimately favoring removal, is notable for explicitly rejecting the "state-sponsored fabrication" narrative advanced by some of Khan's supporters as "toxic and inaccurate," noting it has been dismissed by the complainant and reportedly by OIOS itself, and cautioning that conflating genuine US interference with the ICC with the separate misconduct allegations lets "sanctions serve as proof of the fabrication theory, which they are not". [29]
Semiotic Analysis of the Discourse
The discourse surrounding Khan's removal is organized around a small set of competing sign-systems, each mobilized to stabilize a preferred meaning for an underlying set of contested facts.
The floating signifier of "political." Both camps deploy the word "political" as a delegitimizing label pointed at the opposing narrative, which suggests it functions less as a descriptive term than as a rhetorical weapon. Khan's supporters call the ASP process "a political vote" and "political referendum" that overrode the judicial panel's factual findings, while institutional voices frame the misconduct proceeding as a properly adjudicated legal matter that opponents are attempting to recast, illegitimately, as geopolitics. [22] [30] [31] Al Jazeera's own headline, "ICC prosecutor Karim Khan removed over 'political' sex abuse claims," places scare quotes around "political," a typographic device that signals the outlet is reporting a contested characterization rather than asserting it as fact — itself a semiotic hedge that manages the outlet's epistemic liability.
Binary oppositions and moral coding. The discourse repeatedly organizes itself around paired oppositions that do interpretive work beyond their literal content: "witch hunt"/"stitch-up" versus "accountability"/serious misconduct; "victim" versus "predator"; "due process" versus "political overreach". [32] [33] Each pairing imports a pre-existing cultural script — the #MeToo script of institutional abuse and power imbalance on one side, and the "lawfare against international prosecutors who target powerful states" script on the other — and invites the reader to resolve ambiguous facts by reference to whichever script feels more familiar, rather than by reference to the facts themselves. [34] Notably, the justsecurity piece explicitly names and resists this move, warning that casting the case as "a contest of East versus West, Global North versus Global South, or a referendum on the validity of the Israel arrest warrants" is a framing built atop an unproven fabrication claim, and insists the two registers — misconduct and geopolitics — must remain "analytically distinct". [35] [36] That the commentary must expend effort disentangling them is itself evidence of how strongly the discourse tends to fuse them.
Metaphor as agency-management. Descriptions of the episode lean heavily on metaphors of natural or architectural crisis rather than deliberate human action: Khan "steps aside in the storm", the confluence of pressures amounts to "a total disaster", and Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatens to "dismantle the ICC — brick by brick". [37] [38] [39] Storm and demolition metaphors cast the institution as a passive object buffeted or attacked by external force, which has the semiotic effect of either diffusing agency (the "storm" framing) or concentrating it dramatically onto a single external actor (the "brick by brick" framing) — two very different rhetorical effects produced by structurally similar metaphors of physical destruction.
Naming and anonymization as power signals. The complainant is rendered through shifting descriptors — "a third party," "junior colleague," "member of staff," and eventually the pseudonym "Sarah" once she spoke publicly. [40] [41] Each label encodes a different relation to institutional power and credibility: "junior colleague" foregrounds hierarchy and vulnerability, while the personal name "Sarah" humanizes her account for a media audience in a way official terms do not. Khan, by contrast, is consistently named and titled ("Chief Prosecutor," "Mr. Khan," "the 56-year-old barrister"), preserving his institutional stature in the very syntax used to describe allegations against him — a naming asymmetry that itself signals the unequal starting positions of accuser and accused in this kind of discourse. [42]
Quantification as legitimation. Numbers recur as symbols of democratic and moral weight independent of their content: "82 of 125" states voting for removal, "63 votes" needed for an absolute majority, and "more than 160" or "175" signatory organizations opposing the process. [4] [22] [43] [44] These figures function rhetorically to signal breadth of consensus — legal or civil-society — even though the underlying question (misconduct, or process fairness) is not actually settled by vote counts or petition tallies.
Verb choice as connotative framing. Headlines describing the same event use verbs with markedly different connotations: "votes to dismiss" (neutral/procedural), "ousted" (implies forceful ejection, loss of status), "removed" (bureaucratic-legal), and "fired" (informal, employment-framed, used by an outlet emphasizing the domestic political angle of the Netanyahu warrant). [45] [46] This variance shows how the choice of a single verb, seemingly a neutral reporting decision, encodes an implicit editorial stance toward the legitimacy and gravity of the outcome.
Taken together, the discourse around Khan's removal illustrates how a legally technical dispute — governed by terms like "beyond reasonable doubt," "serious misconduct," and "due process" that both sides invoke as authoritative — becomes a site where competing narrative frames (feminist/institutional-accountability versus anti-imperialist/lawfare) compete to fix its meaning, with each side's vocabulary choices, metaphors, and naming conventions functioning as much to secure interpretive terrain as to describe events. [47]
References
1. ICC member states vote to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan
2. ICC votes to dismiss Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan
3. Karim Khan ousted from role as prosecutor of international criminal court | International criminal court | The Guardian
4. ICC members dismiss prosecutor Karim Khan | The Straits Times
5. ICC bureau suspends prosecutor Karim Khan pending final vote on misconduct probe | Middle East Eye
6. ICC bureau suspends prosecutor Karim Khan pending final vote on misconduct probe | Middle East Eye
7. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
8. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
9. Statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC on the issuance of arrest warrants in the Situation in the State of Palestine | International Criminal Court
10. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
11. Fate of ICC chief prosecutor heads to unprecedented vote ...
12. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
13. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
14. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
15. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
16. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
17. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
18. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
19. ICC bureau suspends prosecutor Karim Khan pending final vote on misconduct probe | Middle East Eye
20. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
21. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
22. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
23. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC
24. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
25. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
26. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
27. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
28. ICC bureau suspends prosecutor Karim Khan pending final vote on misconduct probe | Middle East Eye
29. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
30. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
31. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
32. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC
33. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC
34. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
35. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
36. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
37. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
38. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
39. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
40. ICC prosecutor steps aside in the storm
41. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
42. ICC prosecutor Karim Khan faces removal vote: What’s the case about? | ICC News | Al Jazeera
43. Khan faces historic removal vote as critics warn ICC process has been politicised | Middle East Eye
44. Over 175 Palestinian and International Organisations Warn that Lack of Due Process and Politicisation in Khan Disciplinary are Corroding the Independence of the ICC
45. ICC prosecutor whose Netanyahu warrant fueled Mamdani arrest threat is fired over sexual misconduct
46. ICC prosecutor Karim Khan removed over ‘political’ sex abuse claims | News | Al Jazeera
47. Before the Assembly: The Removal Vote and the Question of Fitness for Office
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