A former United Nations investigations chief has accused the International Criminal Court’s executive body of subjecting Prosecutor Karim Khan to a “stitch-up” in their decision to suspend him from office over misconduct allegations.

Ben Swanson is a former UN assistant secretary-general and deputy head of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), and has previously served as director of the OIOS Investigations Division.

Swanson criticised the bureau for choosing to disregard the judicial panel and to make its own conclusion and credibility assessments saying that the evidence of serious misconduct reached the required standard.

“The Bureau in determining credibility did not act with the same legal restraint as the Panel, declaring themselves unrestricted, and by using semantic gymnastics promptly used the same material as was available to the Judges, with the addition of more submissions from the Prosecutor and [the complainant], although they discounted the latter’s, to enable them to make credibility assessments,” the expert wrote.