Sarah, the 39-year-old ICC staffer from Malaysia who once worked as Karim Khan's direct special assistant, spoke publicly for the first time on Thursday about her sexual abuse allegations against the court's chief prosecutor. Her account landed just days before the ICC's member states are due to decide whether he stays in office.
Speaking in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, Sarah described what she said was an escalating pattern that began with boundary-crossing and turned physical. She alleged that Khan came into her hotel room during an official visit to Colombia and started to put his hand down her leggings, grope her and put his tongue in her ear. Khan denies the allegations.
Her public appearance matters because it puts a name and a face to a case that has already shaken the International Criminal Court for two years. Khan was elected in 2021 to a nine-year term running the court's prosecution division, and details of Sarah's allegations first emerged in late 2024, throwing his tenure into disarray.
A second woman, Patricia, also spoke in the same interview. She said that while she was an intern in 2009 and required to work at Khan's house, he repeatedly came on to her, groped her, grabbed her, kissed her face, touched her hair and tried to push her toward intimate activity. Sarahte Ashraph, who is representing Khan, said the allegations are not new and that the evidential picture is far different from what has been presented publicly.
The court's governing body suspended Khan last month after its executive committee concluded that he had committed serious misconduct in connection with the claims involving Sarah, then sent the matter to the ICC's 125 member states. They are expected to convene at the UN headquarters in New York next week for a vote on whether to remove him from office on 24 July.
That vote now carries the weight of more than Khan's future. It will test whether the ICC's member states accept the disciplinary finding that led to his suspension, or whether they side with a prosecutor who remains in denial and whose lawyers say the public case is incomplete. Sarah said the behaviour she described was not a sudden breach but an escalation, and by speaking now she has forced the court's members to confront that accusation before they make their decision.
