A few months ago, I posted more details about coerced sexual intercourse allegations against ICC Chief Prosecutor Can Cream Karim Khan.
Now another of his alleged victims has come forward to accuse him of sexual shenanigans.
Patricia said that before going to work for Khan she had viewed the internship as an “exciting and meaningful” opportunity. “Karim was a well-connected, well-respected person who could make things happen, and someone who would put a good word in for you,” she said.
However, she said working for Khan “came at a price it shouldn’t have come at, and the price it came at did disturb and distress me for some time afterwards”.
According to Patricia, an early experience of Khan’s alleged misconduct occurred at the court’s offices where she claimed Khan “groped” her breasts with a “prolonged” caress that was “completely unconsented”.
“It wasn’t like ‘oops, I brushed the back of my hand against you, I’m sorry’,” she said. “He was too close.”
Patricia said the incident in the office left her “confused and humiliated”, but over the following weeks she was required to work closely with Khan on preparing part of a case. During this period, she said, Khan asked her on at least six occasions to work at his home in The Hague, where they would be alone together.
She said that when working at his apartment she had to negotiate his advances while trying to get work done. “I was trying to figure out how to stay in his good graces and get the work experience while not sleeping with him and succumbing,” she said.
This was difficult, she said, “because when we were in his house it was just like a constant onslaught”. She claimed that each time she worked at the apartment “it would be another round of [Khan] sitting next to me on the couch and touching me and kissing me and trying to convince me to sleep with him”.
Patricia said she “felt trapped” at the time. She was covering the costs of the internship and felt it was vital she received a positive letter of recommendation from Khan. Complaining was not an option, she said, and the choice she faced was to “either persevere or leave”.
“It felt critical to me to get through the experience,” she said. “I remember walking to his house and feeling like I had to amp myself up, feeling like I had to fortify myself.”
She said she refused Khan’s explicit requests to have sex. “I remember coming up with all kinds of dumb excuses for why I did not want to sleep with him, just to try and not make him angry.”
She said although she was “miserable” and depressed while working for Khan, she decided to stay. After the internship had finished, she received a glowing recommendation letter from Khan. She said it “felt like a deal with the devil”.
Patricia said she remained in touch with Khan for several years as she felt a professional need to keep on good terms with him. Over time, she said, she came to realise how Khan’s behaviour had affected her.
She said Khan would send her messages from time to time long after the internship, though she eventually stopped responding. In 2019, she received what she described as a “weird message” out of the blue. Khan said he was thinking about her. He thanked her for her “good company” and for “being a very good friend to me”.
She replied: “Karim, it does not make me happy to hear from you, that is why I do not respond. I wish you wouldn’t contact me, please don’t do it any more.” She did not hear from Khan again.
Naturally, Khan’s legal team are claiming it is a witchhunt instigated by you-know-who:
The law firm representing Khan, Carter-Ruck, said he had an unblemished record and denied the allegations. They said he was “cooperating fully and transparently” with the ongoing inquiry but that he had “grave concerns as to whether the investigation can deliver due process”.
They claimed Khan “has been the subject of an orchestrated campaign” and said he was aware of attempts to “discredit him and destroy his personal reputation through the media, as a direct consequence of his role in issuing the arrest warrants” for Netanyahu and Gallant.
But even the Guardian is skeptical.
Last year the Guardian, with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, revealed how Israel’s intelligence agencies had run a campaign against the ICC. This included a Mossad operation that attempted to intimidate and smear Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda.
Against this backdrop, Khan and people acting on his behalf have sought to suggest in private and to journalists that he is the subject of a similar effort by Israeli intelligence.
In recent weeks, outlets such as Middle East Eye (MEE) and Le Monde have published reports about pressures purportedly placed on Khan. An MEE article claimed the ICC’s investigation into Israeli war crimes had been “derailed by threats, leaks and sex claims”, and raised questions about the reliability of the staffer’s allegations.
Five ICC sources familiar with Khan’s response to the claims when the allegations first surfaced told the Guardian that his team concluded it was highly unlikely the abuse claims were part of an intelligence operation. One of the sources said pro-Israeli interests “may have exploited the story but they didn’t create the story”.
The ICC staffer at the heart of the inquiry has been particularly distressed by suggestions she is part of a pro-Israeli plot, according to people who know her. They noted that she is Muslim, and was known within the prosecutor’s office to have been supportive of its investigation into senior Israeli officials’ crimes in Gaza.
And that’s the kicker: when you’ve got the Guardian – a paper normally eager to bend over backwards to excuse Israel’s enemies – openly casting doubt on your excuses, the game is up.
