The allegations against Karim Khan

Chief prosecutor may be poked by the UN after allegations

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, is accused of sexual assault by his own employee. A vote will be held today to determine whether he can remain at the ICC, writes AFP.

The vote is taking place as a result of the accusations made by a female colleague who claimed that she was subjected to sexual advances by him, including intimate groping and attempted kissing.

Khan has made a name for himself for having issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and representatives of Hamas. He himself claims that the allegations are fabricated and politically motivated.

Today's vote is taking place at the UN headquarters in New York. 

Khan's colleague to CNN: I was pretending to be asleep

The American news channel CNN is the only media company to have obtained an interview with the woman behind the allegations against the ICC's chief prosecutor Karim Khan. In an interview, where she is referred to as "Sarah", she says that she never asked to be put in this situation.

According to a report submitted to the UN, Khan is said to have sexually assaulted her during a business trip to Colombia and Venezuela. "Sarah" told CNN that he entered her hotel room and groped inside her pants and assaulted her.

- I pretended to be asleep, but no one falls asleep that quickly unless you are on drugs or have drunk a lot of alcohol, she says.

Karim Khan, for his part, has dismissed her story as a practical impossibility - due to the strict security arrangements that always surround him when he travels.

Rubio: “ICC is a Collection of Madmen and Fools”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has dismissed the entire International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague as a collection of “madmen and fools”, writes Reuters.

“If there are people who want to agree to be part of such a stupid organization, they can of course do so. But we will not be part of it and it will not be able to exercise power over Americans,” he said, in connection with his visit to Manila on Thursday.

The statement comes after discussions about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested when he visits the United States in September.

Netanyahu has been the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the ICC since November 2024, for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the methods used by Israel in the invasion of Gaza.

According to an agreement, suspects are to be arrested if they set foot in any of the court's 125 member states, but the United States is not one of them.