Top ICC prosecutor removed over sexual misconduct allegations

0:00Hello, I'm Sean Lay. Thanks for downloading the BBC's World Tonight podcast from Friday the 24th of July. Karim Khan has been dismissed as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court after he was accused of sexual misconduct. A leading international lawyer says he should have quit when the claims were first made. Will the case harm the authority of a court which investigates serious crimes committed by states? Russia's attacked a drone exhibition outside Kiev being attended by some of Ukraine's top brass. We'll have the latest and explore why the Ukrainian success with drones is causing Moscow such anxiety.

0:32On the eve of the Edinburgh Festival, visitors are facing a tourist tax. We'll hear from someone in the entertainment industry who thinks it's a mistake. Burnham's Week, we discuss how the scorecard is looking for Britain's new Prime Minister. And the great, great grandson of Charles Dickens on performing The Signalman in a Devon beauty spot. he's been telling me the real-life Dickens experience behind the ghost story. Stay with us for some chills and maybe even some thrills. The International Criminal Court, the ICC, has achievements to its name, not least demonstrating that former heads of state don't always enjoy impunity for their actions.

1:11Current defendants include Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines. The ICC is different from other international courts. it tries individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. But tonight its reputation is under fire after its member countries dismissed the chief prosecutor, British lawyer Karim Khan, over allegations of sexual misconduct. The Assembly has decided by maturity of 82 state parties that the elected official prosecutor Karim Khan committed serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty under Article 46.1 of the Rome Statute and to remove the elected official prosecutor Karim Khan from office under Article 46, Paragraph 2b of the Rome Statute.

2:01That's the President of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court, Pai V Kalkoranta. The BBC's correspondent Anna Holligan has been covering the court and following Karim Khan's case throughout. Anna, tell us about the vote. Who was voting and what was decided? Oh, this is an unprecedented moment in the ICC's history, a time when the court has already been under intense scrutiny. So this was a meeting of the Assembly of States parties, 125 member states of the ICC at the UN's headquarters in New York. Out of those 125 members, 82 voted in favour of dismissing Kareem Kahn.

2:39And in a brief statement at the end of the meeting, you heard there from the ASP president. She said that the ICC staff had been working through this uncertainty. She praised their navigation and dedication and said they'd demonstrated resolve to continue to function, discharge critical mandate and support victims of atrocity crimes the world over. But it's impossible to separate this court from the actions of its top prosecutor. And that's something now that supporters of the court are desperately battling with in the hope that this will enable them to draw some kind of line under the investigations which have been happening over the last two years.

3:23Yeah, investigations involving a couple of women who've made complaints against him. Exactly. So the allegations at hand here first emerged in 2024. These allegations centred on claims that he had sexually harassed a junior aide over more than a year, escalated to non-consensual sexual conduct. And then he tried to discourage her, allegedly, from pursuing a complaint, all while he was, of course, the ICC's most powerful official. The woman who was a lawyer who worked as his assistant had described a pattern that began with inappropriate familiarity on trips in his office, groping, putting his hand in her pocket, locking doors, asking her to lie on a hotel bed.

4:06and all culminated, she said, in sexual activity. She didn't feel she was able to refuse given the power imbalance. All of these allegations Kareem Khan has consistently denied. And in the last hour or so, his lawyer has posted a statement on social media saying he will seek legal mechanisms to appeal this decision. But those claims triggered an 18-month-long UN investigation that found a factual basis for non-consensual contact. A legal review then by three judges said the same evidence didn't prove misconduct beyond reasonable doubt, so a high bar. And then the court's oversight bureau later applied its own standard and concluded that Kareem Khan had sexually harassed the aide, engaged in an improper sexual relationship and recommended his dismissal.

4:56That's what the members were voting on and that's what they have decided is the basis for him being removed from office. Anna Holligan, thank you very much. Well, some of Karim Khan's supporters have suggested he's become a victim of powerful countries angry at the arrest warrants he sought against their leaders. In 2023, Mr Khan sought an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin for the war crime of unlawfully detaining Ukrainian children and transferring them to Russia. Two years ago, in November 2024, came the decision which supercharged opposition to the court in The Hague in both Israel and amongst many in the US.

5:32The International Criminal Court, the ICC, has issued arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. A third arrest warrant was issued for Hamas military chief Mohamed Daif, who Israel says it killed earlier this year. It is falsely accusing me, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the state of Israel, of deliberately targeting civilians. This when we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties. Haag is an anti-Semitic court in an anti-Semitic world.

6:12We're not going to let you guys have your hands on him. Not going to happen. Wait a couple of months till Trump gets on board and then we'll see what you have to say. And a couple of months later, with Donald Trump back in the White House, the United States imposed sanctions against ICC officials, including Mr Khan. Tonight comes the news that Venezuela has begun the process of leaving the International Criminal Court, a court which has been investigating the actions of Nicolas Maduro's government. Well, Philippe Sanz, KC, is an international human rights lawyer. He helped to draft the Rome Statute, the international treaty which established the ICC.

6:49Philippe Sanz, welcome to the world tonight. It's two years since these allegations first appeared. They're about an individual, albeit a powerful one. How much harm do you think they've done the court itself? Well, I think the whole story is sort of tragic for the court and could have been handled in a very different way. One option is to have just had a speedier process, which would no doubt have come to similar facts. Another would have been for a different type of individual to say, as prosecutor, I deny all of this, but in the interests of the organisation, I will step aside in order to allow it to carry on its work.

7:24And that didn't happen. So this has gone on for well over 18 months now. And I think it has left the court in a very, very difficult situation. Karim Khan has said tonight he's going to appeal the judgment. His argument seems to be that politics got in the way of justice. Do you think the process has been politicized? I mean, there's argument and there's counter argument. There's a suggestion on his side that this has been politicized because people who are upset with some of the indictments he sought and obtained have targeted him personally. But there is also the suggestion that he sped up the process of issuing indictments because he had a sense that some of this would be coming.

8:03I think the bottom line of it is that the treaty that creates the ICC provides in Article 46 that it is for the members to decide whether he stays or goes. And that's what's happened today. There's no question in my view that somehow there should have been a judicial approach or a judicial settlement. I think this is what the statute provides for. It has happened and we now need to move on as quickly as possible and get a new prosecutor. Yeah, I mean, there have been suggestions that the court could be without a chief prosecutor for months. I mean, there are other people working in the legal team at the ICC.

8:39Does the absence of a chief prosecutor matter? It does matter because what we have now is we've got sort of acting prosecutor, actually a couple of people working together. And they, of course, can't really take the tough decisions because they don't know if they're going to be around in six months' time. It takes time to appoint a prosecutor. It's sort of put out a tender. People will put in applications. I mean, query who actually would want the job right now when you know you're going to go straight into sanctions, no doubt, from the US administration. But there'll be, I hope, some decent candidates.

9:12It's a really important function. The court has done some very, very good work. It could have done its work rather differently. I think a different prosecutor might have proceeded to secret indictments, for example. So there's been a bit too much showboating, do you think? Well, I think that Mr Khan does like a bit of publicity. And I think a different type of individual would have handled these complex, controversial, difficult matters in a different way. And in a sense, I think it might be said he's the author of his own misfortunes by having taken such a public stance in the way that he has.

9:49But I think the bottom line of it is now, the states have got to move as fast as they reasonably can, get a new prosecutor in post, and then decide what to do. And of course, the first thing a prosecutor is going to have in their intray is what to do with existing arrest warrants and indictments. And frankly, it's going to be very difficult to go backwards. These arrest warrants and indictments that your correspondent very rightly has been talking about have been issued not by the prosecutor's office but by panels of judges. They too have been sanctioned. And so it's very difficult to see how the court reverses position and where it goes from here exactly.

10:30Yeah, it goes to its credibility, doesn't it? I just wanted to ask you briefly and finally if you can, Has the court lived up to what you were hoping for when you drafted that preamble to the Rome statute all those years ago? I think one's got to be honest and say, no, it hasn't. And the question comes into one's mind, was the world actually really ready for an international criminal court? The fundamental issue is the ability to dispense justice equally across the board. And one of the problems the ICC has faced is that it has tended until very recently before Mr. Putin to target individuals who are basically all from Africa and all black.

11:11And that is and has been a very real problem. And so now you've got a situation which a prosecutor asks themselves the question, if you go against a powerful country such as the United States or one of the permanent members of the Security Council, because Russia too has sanctions against people at the International Criminal Court, what price are you going to pay? So there are serious questions and the inbox for the new prosecutor is going to be a very, very tough one. Philip Sands, Casey. Thank you very much.

11:47A helicopter circles over Burgohondo Forest west of the Spanish capital Madrid, dropping water onto a wildfire. In truth, many of these efforts are in vain. The fire's so powerful and the land's so dry that their advance can't be inhibited, only slowed. There have been mass evacuations in the south-west of France and in Spain, which has had the worst fires the Madrid region has ever seen. Here, a major incident has been declared in Aberdeenshire because of the fire in the Cairngorms, that's been burning for more than a week. Together, all paint an alarming picture of how summers are becoming drier and hotter for longer than we in Europe have been used to.

12:23Let's talk now to Professor Hannah Cloak, who's Regis Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science at Reading University. It is potentially, Hannah, scary stuff, but we do see wildfires every year, particularly in the southern Mediterranean. What is different, if we can say anything is different yet, about this year? yes well the first thing is it is a little bit scary and i think we have to realize that um it's not quite yet the worst fire we have seen but we're very early in the summer and of course it depends which region you're looking at so in some of these regions we've never seen these types of fires before and of course we've got tourists being evacuated and that's very very scary indeed for those people who are involved in that and they're probably not ready for that kind of thing.

13:08Certainly as a UK tourist in a different country, we're not set up to listen to perhaps siren broadcasts in a different language. And that can feel very scary indeed. The heatwaves this summer have been particularly strong. Here in the UK, we've had three heatwaves, the very, very early spring heatwave. That was very serious indeed. That has broken records indeed. And we have seen a number of days here in Reading. We've had 15 days over the 30 degree threshold, which has beaten that 1976 record. And of course, lots of other records have been broken as well. So this summer, yes, definitely a little bit scary.

13:45What are the factors that are making wildfires particularly powerful at the moment? Well, if we have a wildfire, we need some fuel. So we've had a bit of a wet winter in many places that has allowed that vegetation to grow. and then we've had no rain at all so it's dried out so we've got all of that fuel ready to go and then we've had these heat waves and then of course people people are often the problem they set the fires lots and lots of wildfires get started by people igniting them so all of these you know all of these things working together has meant that we're in a very serious situation in the UK and Europe.

14:23What's the climate change aspect of this if it's possible to distinguish one? Well, very certainly there is a climate change aspect. Every year we keep burning fossil fuels as summers are getting hotter. They're getting worse. And we know that that's just physics. It's the basic physics of what we're seeing. So we can definitely, like heat is one of those things where you can definitely say there is this really, really strong link between climate change and heat waves. And we've seen this, it has been really hot. I'm certainly been really struggling myself, but other people have been struggling much worse, of course.

14:59So yes, we're very, very sure that these heat waves, these wildfires, and of course, some of the drought we're seeing as well is triggered by climate change. Adaptability then is the question of what we need to do in terms of changing our behaviour. I mean, I suppose one thing you've already alluded to, we have to think about the management of all that extra vegetation. Yes, but also we have to learn to live with this. I mean, some of the UK fires we've seen, people don't know what to do. If a fire comes near you, you know, what are you supposed to do? We don't have any of the training in that.

15:35And also I've heard reports of people setting off fireworks recently, you know, in the last couple of days in an area which is extremely dry. So we have no training that, you know, having a disposable barbecue or setting off fireworks is a really, really bad idea right now because everything is very, very dry and ready to ignite. So some of that is about adapting our thinking to the fact that our summers are going to be different. Professor Hannah Cloak, Regis Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science at Reading University, thank you very much. It was the last Prime Minister to hail from the north-west of England who suggested a week is a long time in politics.

16:14Andy Burnham, the newest occupant of the office, has certainly made plenty of headlines in this one, and his first week won't actually be over until Sunday. Here's a flavour of Burnham's week in Burnham's words. It's a big day, but I'm starting it here at The Passage in Victoria, an amazing organisation that supports people who are street homeless, recovering from homelessness. It just felt to me the right place to start. For too long, people said it's not possible to reduce bus fares. Well, we showed everybody in Greater Manchester that it is possible. And today I'm taking the£2 fare cap national.

16:52Today's announcement is very close to my heart. I'm giving thousands of pubs, clubs and music venues a 20 % cut in their business rates. These places deserve my support, our support, and they're getting it. So what's the scorecard so far at the end of the fifth of the first seven days of Andy Burnham as Prime Minister? Lucy Fisher is Whitehall editor at the FT, and we brought her together with Noah Hoffman, political correspondent at The Spectator. I started by asking Noah for her verdict on week one. The snap verdict is that ultimately it has been a decent success. He's been in control of the narrative.

17:30He's created clear blue water between himself and Keir Starmer in that he's been able to come out with a succession of cost of living announcements. Now, while these announcements are quite meagre in terms of the actual amount of pounds they're going to save people every month, it is a sign of intent. It's a sign that he wants to do something about this huge problem that's plaguing the nation without attaching, say, 50 tedious consultations to it, as Keir Starmer so infamously did. And then to top the week of consumerist cost of living interventions up, he said, I'm going to put a break on letting out the pedos and the rapists, which from a very superficial level is a measure the public will support.

18:14Although, of course, down the line, both the cost of living interventions will cost somebody money. And of course, then there's the prison capacity crisis as well. But if we're looking in the short term, I would say it's been a success. Lucy Fisher, what's your verdict? Broadly, I agree with Noah. I think one of the key criticisms of Keir Starmer was that he was sluggish to define himself. And Burnham has managed to paint in broad brushstrokes an image of exactly who he is as a person, who he stands for, the ordinary voter, people on lower to medium incomes and the left behind. But nonetheless, there are potential problems stored up in the medium to long term.

18:52The first is on the economics. The announcements he's put forward this week cost in excess of 1.5 billion. And we've got a story on the FT tonight about how John Healy's fiscal headroom has reduced by two thirds since the spring statement, due in large part to the Iran war, but also to the fresh spending commitments this week. He's potentially storing up problems on prison capacity, as Noah mentioned, but there are prison governors warning of turmoil in the criminal justice system in having to put the brakes on their plans to release 5 ,000 plus prisoners in literally a matter of weeks. And thirdly, yes, the cabinet reshuffle went off without a hitch this week.

19:36But the purge of the Starmerites was pretty brutal. And in the same way, he has been propelled to power Burnham by many people who were axed by Starmer. You know, he could be a victim of the same medicine by creating this cadre of disgruntled MPs on the back benches who feel that they were unfairly turfed out of office by him. And he claims to want to end the factionalism within the party. That hasn't actually been borne out by his reshuffle. So I completely agree with Lucy. You really can't underestimate just how poisonous to our prime minister's mission an embittered MP can be. And he has quite a few of them now.

20:17And it won't just be purged cabinet members, but also even as simple as those who missed out on a more junior ministerial position might think, look, there's going to be an election, whether that's sooner than we thought or only a few years away. I might lose my seat. I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well raise all hell. That is an issue. I don't think that the people who are talking about costing and that problem that's coming down the line, I don't think that's your average voter thinking about that. There will be moments where he will have to make decisions that aren't in tune with this likeable, fun, cool dad vibe that he's got going on.

20:56Yeah, Lucy, I was going to ask you a little bit about that. The style is clearly more appealing to the public. There's a survey from YouGov that suggests that the first favourability poll of Andy Burnham's premiership, which found 38 % of Britain seeing him favourably, 35 % unfavourably, but that actually his net rating as Prime Minister is six points higher than Keir Starmer's was after he won the 2024 general election. So some of those initial, and they're obviously a snapshot, but some of those initial reactions seem favourable. But style is one thing, substance is another. Has the substance changed?

21:30Yes, I think it has. You know, he is unabashedly more left-leaning and he set out this programme for government that sounds actually quite ambitious and different to what Starmer was promising. You know, wanting to turn back the dial on 40 years of what he calls neoliberalism, talking about quite a bold programme of bringing essential utilities into more public control. We still need to see the details of if that means sort of full-blooded nationalisation or greater regulation. Devolution, that's one of the key ideas at the heart of his plans for government. The vision is there. And beyond that, I do think we live in a time where a lot of ordinary people are conversant in the language of communications and can be cynical about the idea of just the optics of politicians and the soundbites they try to create.

22:24But if we step back, personality is important in politics. The ability to tell stories, to persuade and bringing the public with you is really important. He's got this warm, very distinctive personality. He's still leaning in quite heavily to the blokeish, quip-heavy persona on social media. He prefers quite a plain speaking register in his speeches. and we'll have to see how long that survives contact with Downing Street. I would note that the T-shirt and bomber jacket have already been retired in favour of the suit and tie. Noah, he's talked this week about producing, at some point in the not-too-distant future, a 10-year plan.

23:03Do people at Westminster think that that could be the prelude to a general election campaign? They do. I mean, it's too early to make these predictions, but when it comes to the idea of a 10-year plan, it does seem to scream general election And that would also sort of align with having the small taster announcements. Because the issue is a lot of the big radical policies that he wants to implement, whether that's creating free at the point of view social care, for instance, whether that's having the biggest council house building program since the Second World War, they're going to require big, big tax rises.

23:40Now, if he wants to make some major, major changes to fiscal policy and to taxes, it is very difficult to see how he can do that without a mandate from the public. Noah Hoffman and Lucy Fisher. It's approaching 29 minutes to 11. That's if you're listening to us live. The main story so far on The World Tonight, the Spanish authorities say emergency services do not have the capacity to contain a huge wildfire raging near Madrid. More than 60 ,000 people have either been evacuated or ordered to remain indoors. France, meanwhile, says the challenge of tackling a wildfire burning in the southwest of the country is completely unprecedented.

24:19Edinburgh is in the build-up to its busiest weeks, the festival and festival fringe, which open in a fortnight's time. And though the rate of inflation has fallen, regulars could be facing more expensive accommodation next month. the city has today introduced a visitor's levy, what some would call a tourist tax. So what do the visitors make of it? I feel like we spend enough money coming here. Why do we have to pay more? I think it's a good thing when people are going to be more mindful about the use they make of the city. You cannot walk on the streets without bumping into somebody, so I would say it's reasonable.

24:53In Spain, it's taxed in Barcelona and the other side, in Mallorca, for example, it's not good for the tourists. It's not a good idea. It's already a city where we spend a lot of money. It seems reasonable. We certainly have a lot of tourists in Alaska and we know that it takes resources to host them. Well, Louise McLean is the Business Development Director of Signature Group, which employs 700 staff across 24 venues. She's also Director of the Scottish Hospitality Group, the trade body for the industry. Louise, welcome to the world tonight. This is something that happens in a lot of cities, as some of the people we heard from just then were pointing out.

25:34Why are you uncomfortable with it happening in Edinburgh? I think the main reason is that, yes, there's tourist taxes all over Europe, certainly. But in Britain, we are already taxed so heavily, or the tourists is taxed so heavily with VAT. So we've got the third highest VAT rate in Europe. So our tourists are taxed at 20 % VAT, then they're taxed at 5 % on their tourist tax, and then they're taxed VAT on that tourist tax again. So yes, in Barcelona and in France, VAT's down at 10%. So it seems that this is possibly a poorly timed initiative, especially when the hospitality trade is not exactly in good shape.