THE HAGUE, July 16 (Reuters) – A junior lawyer at the International Criminal Court on Thursday repeated her allegations that prosecutor Karim Khan had non-consensual sexual contact with her, in a CNN interview that was her first public media appearance.
Khan, 56, denies any wrongdoing. His lawyer, Sareta Ashraph, told CNN he denies “any form of sexual contact, relationship, consensual or non-consensual” with the alleged victim. Khan’s lawyers did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
The woman, identified only as Sarah, would not comment on the ICC’s investigations into Khan, but told CNN he had shown escalating behaviour of touching and groping her, recounting a time she said he touched her intimately while she was pretending to be asleep.
“There is no way for something to be consensual when you have such a power disparity,” Sarah told CNN.
Diplomats running the ICC’s oversight body have decided Khan did have an inappropriate sexual relationship with a junior staff member and should be fired, according to documents seen by Reuters. The court’s 125 member states are set to vote on July 24 on a proposal to dismiss him for alleged sexual misconduct.
Khan’s supporters say he has become a political target for seeking arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli officials over the war in Gaza.
In the interview, Sarah denied online rumours that she worked for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, saying she underwent extensive security checks in order to be able to work closely with Khan and his predecessor.
“If ever there was even a hint of suspicion that I was a state agent of any kind, I would have been dismissed,” she said.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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