UN expert Albanese says Khan's removal 'lines up neatly with fight to neutralise Netanyahu's warrant’
The UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories on Saturday said the removal of International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan cannot be read in isolation from the campaign to overturn the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Khan's removal lines up neatly with the fight to neutralise Netanyahu's arrest warrant. Coincidence is a luxury intl law can no longer afford," Francesca Albanese wrote on X.
"This proves that justice DOES threaten Apartheid Israel & Co. So if the ICC is paralysed, lawyers and judges worldwide must do more."
Albanese's statement was in response to an Israeli media report that said Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, "played an active role" in efforts to remove Khan.
The report cited a senior Israeli official as saying that "Saar oversaw a dedicated task force and employed intensive diplomatic efforts aimed at securing Khan’s removal from office".
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Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in May 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza has unleashed a ferocious campaign of threats and sanctions on him and those supporting the court's work on Palestine.
Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer who has held the UN mandate since 2022, was reacting to the vote by ICC member states at a special session in New York to dismiss Khan over misconduct claims.
Eighty-two of the court's 125 states parties backed removal in a secret ballot, exceeding the 63 needed. Thirteen voted against and 15 abstained. It is the first time a sitting ICC prosecutor has been removed.
'Pro-apartheid camp'
Albanese has previously accused a “pro-apartheid camp” of seeking to overthrow Khan.
In March, after Middle East Eye revealed that a panel of three judicial experts appointed by the court's own oversight body had unanimously cleared Khan, Albanese wrote that "the pro-Apartheid camp is already working to remove him ANYWAY: those who stand for justice must ensure this attempt fails".
The panel found that the findings of UN investigators "do not establish misconduct or breach of duty under the relevant framework".
The Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties, an executive body of 21 diplomats, voted weeks later to set that conclusion aside.
MEE revealed this month that the bureau had also changed the voting rules, collapsing a planned two-stage vote into a single motion and lowering the effective threshold for dismissal.
Albanese was sanctioned by the Donald Trump administration in July 2025, days after publishing a report naming more than 60 companies she said were profiting from Israel's occupation.
Khan was the first ICC official designated under the same executive order, in February 2025, over the warrants sought for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Eleven ICC officials had been sanctioned by the end of last year, including both deputy prosecutors and several judges who ruled against Israel.
The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant remain in force and can only be withdrawn by judges.
Israel has been calling for the warrants to be dropped.
Commenting before the prosecutor's dismissal had been officially confirmed, Saar called on the court to drop the arrest warrants against Israeli officials, reiterating Israel's debunked claim that it was rushed to distract from sexual misconduct allegations.
"These warrants, issued against a country that is not even a member of the ICC, should never have been sought in the first place and should be revoked immediately," he wrote on X.
Ever since the warrants were issued by pre-trial judges in November 2024, Israel has mounted a series of legal challenges aimed at invalidating them.
Two are still pending, including Israel's argument that the court has no jurisdiction over its nationals at all, since Israel isn’t a state party to the Rome Statute.
The office of the prosecutor is now headed by deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang, both sanctioned by the US in August under the same executive order that targeted Albanese and Khan.
Following the removal vote, the ICC’s office of the prosecutor released a statement saying that its work would continue without interruption.
Elections for a new prosecutor should follow, but a timeline has yet to be announced by the court's governing body.
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