Since the claims surfaced against Khan in 2024, he has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has suggested the accusations were part of a conspiracy to discredit him over his decision to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli senior officials.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan claimed that the accusations were part of a conspiracy to undermine his decision to seek arrest warrants for Bibi Netanyahu and other Israeli senior officials (Getty Images)Getty Images
In the interview with CNN, Sarah, who has been working at the court since 2017, and is still employed there, said how, soon after arriving at a hotel in Columbia, Khan, 56, asked her to look at a text message, insisting on coming to her room, even after she said she was tired.
“I thought he wouldn’t try anything because there were two staff members on either side of my room.”
But she recounted how she stood close to the door of her room while Khan showed her the text message, and that when Khan asked if she was going to take a nap, she said she was and suggested they spoke later.
Sarah said: “He said he would take a nap as well with me. I froze. I lay on the edge of the bed facing the wall, sort of in a foetal position…I pretended to be asleep.”
She said she “felt Mr Khan scooch over in his bed and he started to put his hand down my leggings, to put his tongue in my ear. I didn’t move an inch – even when his fingernails caught my skin. I didn’t flinch, I was just still. If you believe someone is asleep, that cannot be consent.”
Asked during the interview if she was a Mossad agent, she replied: “No”, also hitting back at any suggestion that she opposed the court’s cases against Israel. She said she “fully and entirely” supported the ICC’s investigations and that she had nothing to gain from launching a complaint against Khan and doing so “completely and utterly damaged my future career prospects”.
She told CNN that Khan’s alleged abuse began after she became his assistant in February 2023 and increased gradually during the following year.
Sarah said she sometimes froze and was afraid that if she rejected Khan, she would lose her job, income and the work visa, which enabled her to live in the Netherlands with her husband and son.
Fearing “a lot of backlash” after the interview, she said it was “not an easy thing to do, but it is also very important”.
Another woman, identified as Patricia, has also accused Khan of sexual misconduct, saying he repeatedly attempted to touch and kiss her after asking her to work from his home. She said this began in 2009 when she was an unpaid intern. Khan has also denied these claims.
