Spain is set to experience an extraordinary weather event this week, with severe rainfall forecasted, particularly along the eastern coast. Regions such as Valencia, Catalonia, Murcia, and eastern Andalucía could get more than 150mm of rain within just 24 hours on Tuesday, which is more than seven times the typical average for this month. Gibraltar is also expected to experience significant rainfall, with totals exceeding 40mm.

The intense downpour is likely due to a phenomenon known as a gota fría, or “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This seasonal occurrence creates atmospheric instability, causing warm, saturated air to rise rapidly, leading to the formation of towering cumulonimbus clouds in a matter of hours, dumping heavy rain across eastern parts of Spain.

A gota fría is officially known as a “depresión aislada en niveles altos” (“Dana” to Spanish meteorologists) which translates as “isolated depression at high altitudes”. While this weather pattern can result in torrential rainfall, hail, thunderstorms, and severe flooding, the exact areas affected can be difficult to predict, as gota fría events are often very localised.

Meanwhile, unusually high night-time temperatures are expected across the US this week. Overnight lows are expected to exceed 20C in cities, including Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Worth – more than 9C above the seasonal average. This unexpected warmth is attributed to a southerly airflow drawing warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico.

In the north Pacific Ocean, Tropical Storm Kong-rey is tracking north-westwards, and is likely to pass by Taiwan early this week, potentially making landfall on Thursday morning. The storm is currently strengthening rapidly and has the potential to develop into a typhoon. Kong-rey is forecasted to bring heavy rain and strong winds, with totals exceeding 300mm in northern Taiwan and 150mm in other areas, posing a significant risk of severe flooding and disruption, and wind gusts could reach over 100mph. However, at this stage it is important to note that the exact track of Kong-rey is uncertain, and its positioning can quickly change over the next few days.

The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said.

It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades.

“Another year, another record,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO. “This should set alarm bells ringing among decision makers.”

The increase was driven by humanity’s “stubbornly high” burning of fossil fuels, the WMO found, and made worse by big wildfires and a possible drop in the ability of trees to absorb carbon.

The concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, the scientists observed. The level of pollution is 151% greater than before the Industrial Revolution, when people began to burn large amounts of coal, oil and fossil gas.

Concentrations of strong but short-lived pollutants also surged. Methane concentrations hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 265% from preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide hit 336.9 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 125%, it said.

Saulo said: “We are clearly off track to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C and aiming for 1.5C above preindustrial levels. These are more than just statistics. Every part per million and every fraction of a degree temperature increase has a real impact on our lives and our planet.”

Burning fossil fuels – such as the petrol to power a car or the coal to feed a thermal power plant – releases gases that trap sunlight and heat the planet.

The WMO warned that this heating can lead to climate feedbacks that are “critical concerns” to society, such as stronger wildfires that pump out more carbon and hotter oceans that suck up less CO2.

There has been a slight slowdown in the growth of global emissions over the last decade but continued strong growth in atmospheric concentrations, said Glen Peters, a climate scientist at the Cicero in Norway, who was not involved in the study. “[That] should give us cause for thought on how strong carbon sinks will remain in a changing climate.”

The Earth last experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 a few million years ago, when the planet was 2-3C hotter and the sea level 10-20 metres higher.

Peters said the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are humanity’s “most accurate measure” of progress. “The data shows, again, we are not making much progress on reducing emissions.”

The WMO announcement comes ahead of the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan next month. It follows a report from the UN Environment Programme on Thursday that found the world is on track to heat 3C by the end of the century. World leaders had promised to stop it from heating 1.5C.

Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the report, said: “The record levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are the logical outcome of the record amounts of greenhouse gases that our economies continue to dump into our ambient air.”

Scientists have estimated investments of $1tn to $2tn (£800bn to £1.6tn) are needed each year to cut emissions to net zero by the middle of the century.

“Current trends will see global warming cross all warming limits that global leaders agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement,” said Rogelj. “[The report] also shows that this doesn’t need to be the end of the story.”

Lev Skoriakin, 23, fled Russia in January 2023 after he was accused of organising a protest outside the FSB security service’s headquarters in Moscow. As his passport was confiscated by the Russian authorities, he was left with a limited number of escape destinations.

“I could choose Armenia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. I do not know why I chose Kyrgyzstan,” Skoriakin says. “At the time we [Russians who sought to leave the country] thought that if we do not stick our heads out, we will be safe. But we were wrong.”

Late in the evening on 16 October 2023, a group of men from the Kyrgyzstan security services knocked on his hostel door in the capital, Bishkek, and asked him to come with them. They drove him to the airport and handed him over to the Russian security service, who handcuffed and accompanied him on a passenger flight back to Moscow.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country in search of safety and to avoid mobilisation, many to central Asia. Many Russians do not have passports, and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan can be entered with only a national ID.

But a growing number of Russians are finding that neighbouring countries in the region, in particular Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, are far from safe.

At least 14 Russian citizens were either detained or deported at Russia’s request from Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan in 2022 and 2023 alone, according to a Freedom House report on transnational repression.

Grady Vaughan, from Freedom House, says: “There are three main types of people Russia seeks to return. These are, obviously, former military officials and soldiers who were afraid of being called up to the war and deserted.

“Then there have also been independent activists, both anarchists and anti-war activists, who have also found themselves detained in relation to their activism and sometimes deported. The third group are journalists.”

Central Asian countries, especially Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, have sought to remain neutral since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but cooperation between the local security services and their Russian counterparts has continued uninterrupted.

Vaughan says: “There is this history of coordination that has made it easier for Russia to rely on these countries’ security services to increase pressure or to intimidate Russian exiles.”

Alina Gorshenina, 29, an ethnic Russian born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, was travelling on an organised tour to Almaty, a city in Kazakhstan, with her mother and 10-year-old daughter to celebrate Children’s Day last June. As they tried to cross the border, she was arrested.

Unbeknown to Alina, Russian authorities had issued an international arrest warrant for her, accusing her of causing bodily harm to a judge in Russia. Thinking she would just be sent back to Kyrgyzstan, she told her mother and daughter to continue the trip without her.

She had only visited Russia twice in her life – the last time seven years ago – but had been a volunteer for Alexei Navalny’s team and a fervent anti-Putin activist, who often got involved in social media quarrels with pro-Putin public figures. “My posts must have offended someone high up,” she told the Guardian.

Alina ended up spending two months behind bars in Kazakhstan before she was freed and allowed to return home. She is now working with a Russian lawyer to fight the charges remotely.

Murat Adam, a Kazakh lawyer who has worked on several cases of people detained at Russia’s request, says: “I think that Russia is trying to intimidate people and to show that those activists who left can also be arrested. They want to scare people off.”

In some of these cases, Kazakhstan refused to deport people to Russia. But according to Adam, this was not because of Kazakhstan’s goodwill, but rather Russia’s failure to submit all the documents to facilitate deportation.

“Our prosecutor general’s office would agree to deport these individuals if Russia provided sufficient proof of their wrongdoing and its intention to prosecute them. But no one provides the information, and Kazakhstan cannot keep people in detention indefinitely,” says Adam.

After his extradition to Russia, Skoriakin expected a long sentence. But instead, after pleading guilty, he received a fine and was set free. He has now moved to Germany, which had granted him asylum before he left for Kyrgyzstan.

“I do not feel completely safe anywhere, but it is surely safer than Kyrgyzstan,” he says. “Russia’s goal is one: to show that no one can escape them.”

Gas stoves kill 40,000 Europeans each year by pumping pollutants into their lungs, a report has found, a death toll twice as high as that from car crashes.

The cookers spew harmful gases linked to heart and lung disease but experts warn there is little public awareness of their dangers. On average, using a gas stove shaves nearly two years off a person’s life, according to a study of households in the EU and UK.

“The extent of the problem is far worse than we thought,” said lead author Juana María Delgado-Saborit, who runs the environmental health research lab at Jaume I University in Spain.

The researchers attributed 36,031 early deaths each year to gas cookers in the EU, and a further 3,928 in the UK. They say their estimates are conservative because they only considered the health effects of nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and not other gases such as carbon monoxide and benzene.

“Way back in 1978, we first learned that NO₂ pollution is many times greater in kitchens using gas than electric cookers,” said Delgado-Saborit. “But only now are we able to put a number on the amount of lives being cut short.”

One in three households in the EU cook with gas, rising to 54% of households in the UK and more than 60% in Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Hungary. The cookers burn fossil gas and eject harmful substances that inflame airways.

The report, which was supported by the European Climate Foundation, builds on research last year that measured air quality in homes to find out how much cooking with gas increased indoor air pollution. This allowed scientists from Jaume I University and the University of Valencia to work out ratios between indoor and outdoor air pollution when cooking with gas, and map indoor exposure to NO₂.

They then applied risk rates of disease, sourced from studies on outdoor NO₂ pollution, to work out the number of lives lost.

“The main uncertainty is whether the risk of dying found with outdoor NO₂ from mainly traffic can be applied to indoor NO₂ from gas cooking,” said Steffen Loft, an air pollution expert at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the research. “But it is a fair assumption and required for the assessment.”

The results fall in line with a study in the US in May, which found gas and propane stoves contribute up to 19,000 adult deaths each year.

The EU tightened its rules on outdoor air quality this month but it has not set standards for indoor air quality. The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) has urged policymakers to phase out gas cookers by setting limits on emissions, offering money to help switch to cleaner cookers and forcing manufacturers to label cookers with their pollution risks.

“For too long it has been easy to dismiss the dangers of gas cookers,” said Sara Bertucci from the EPHA. “Like cigarettes, people didn’t think much of the health impacts – and, like cigarettes, gas cookers are a little fire that fills our home with pollution.”

People can partly protect themselves from fumes when cooking by opening windows when they cook and turning on extractor fans.

Delgado-Saborit said she and her husband grew up in homes where cooking was done on electric hobs, which is “cleaner, safer and healthier”, but later moved into a home with a gas stove in the kitchen.

“We are now in the midst of some home improvements and I am counting the days for having a new electric hob fitted in my kitchen.”

Anger and vitriol took center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants.

Nine days out from the election, Trump used the rally in New York to repeat his claim that he is fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the largest deportation program in American history”, amid incoherent ramblings about ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land.

The event at Madison Square Garden, in the center of Manhattan, had drawn comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, said there was a “direct parallel” between the two events, and the Democratic National Committee projected images on the outside of the building on Sunday repeating claims from Trump’s former chief-of-staff that Trump had “praised Hitler”.

There was certainly a dark tone throughout the hours-long rally, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2m US citizens, as an “island of garbage”; Tucker Carlson mocking Harris’ racial identity; a radio host describing Hillary Clinton as a “sick bastard”; and a crucifix-wielding childhood friend of Trump’s declaring that Harris is “the antichrist”.

The Puerto Rico comments, made by Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist remarks, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican popstar who has more than 18m followers on Instagram, wrote in a post: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

But that could prove problematic in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing state’s 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both campaigns have been trying to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the campaign, and Harris had visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia earlier on Sunday, where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico.

The pugnacious mood didn’t change once Trump began speaking, as the former president quickly repeated his pledge to “launch the largest deportation program in American history”.

Trump continued his frequent rants about immigration and claimed that a “savage Venezuelan prison gang” had “taken over Times Square”, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has recently visited the New York landmark. The former president also stated, wrongly, that the Biden administration did not have money to respond to a recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent all of their money bringing in illegal immigrants, flying them in by beautiful jet planes”.

Trump’s usual dystopian threats were on offer, as the 78-year-old expanded on his claims about “the enemy within” – a group of political opponents that he has said he will set the military on if elected.

“We’re just not running against Kamala. I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know this. She means nothing, she’s purely a vessel that’s all she is,” Trump said.

“We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious radical-left machine that runs today’s Democrat party. They’re just vessels.”

Trump’s appearance at Madison Square Garden – home to the New York Knicks and Rangers, and venue for countless legendary acts including Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and John Lennon’s last concert appearance before his murder – marks the culmination of his peculiar love-hate flirtation with his native city. Despite the fact that he has no chance of winning New York state – Harris is 15 points ahead in the Five Thirty Eight tracker poll – this was his third rally here this year.

In May he made an audacious attempt to woo Black and Latino voters in the south Bronx, just a few miles from his childhood home in Queens. Then in September, he pitched up in the New York City suburbs in Long Island.

What Trump intends by staging this trilogy of seemingly pointless electoral appearances is unclear. He has used his rambling speeches to take a nostalgic walk down memory lane to what he sees as the golden days of his life as a New York real estate magnate.

But he has also portrayed New York City in the most dark and dystopian terms, as a rat-infested haven for drug addicts, gangs and “illegal aliens” housed in luxury apartments while military veterans shiver on the sidewalks. His toxic language is perhaps a reflection of his bitterness towards the city of his birth, which in separate court cases has convicted him of 34 felonies, found his company the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud, and found him personally liable for sexual abuse.

On Sunday Trump again criticized his home town, claiming that the Biden administration had forced “hundreds of thousands of really rough people” into the city and telling New Yorkers, despite police saying crime has declined: “Your crime is through the roof. Everything is through the roof.”

The pugnacious tone had been set earlier in the afternoon, when several of the opening speakers made obscenity-laced and hate-filled remarks.

Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico – he also made lewd sexual innuendos about Latina women – were met with big laughs from the crowd. A comment from radio personality Sid Rosenberg that Hillary Clinton is a “sick bastard” was similarly well received, as was Rosenberg’s claim that “the fucking illegals get everything they want”.

David Rem, a Republican politician who the Trump campaign described as a childhood friend of the former president, called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist”, to loud cheers. Rem later took a crucifix out of his pocket and announced that he was running for New York City mayor.

As soon as Trump announced his intention to stage a rally at Madison Square Garden just days before the election, critics leapt to point out historical parallels with one of the most notorious events in New York history. On 20 February 1939, just seven months before Germany invaded Poland, the pro-Hitler German American Bund held a mass Nazi rally in the exact same arena.

The organizers chose George Washington’s birthday as the date to parade their vision of an Aryan Christian country dedicated to white supremacy and American patriotism. They erected a giant portrait of Washington, which they flanked with swastika flags alongside the stars and stripes.

More than 20,000 American Nazi sympathisers attended, many dressed in storm trooper uniforms and giving the Sieg Heil salute. The “Führer” of the American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, told the crowd that America would be “returned to the people who founded it”, and decried the “Jewish controlled press”.

Hillary Clinton had noted the similarities between the two events in an interview with CNN last week, and at a rally in Nevada earlier on Sunday, Walz was happy to continue the comparison.

“Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden,” Walz said.

“There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.”

The Trump campaign reacted furiously to the accusations, describing Clinton’s comments as “disgusting”. One of the few people to reference the 1939 rally on Sunday was Hulk Hogan, who emerged to wrestling music, spent several seconds struggling to rip off his shirt, then claimed: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here”.

After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to the American voters to decide.

The high carbon emissions of the world’s richest 1% are worsening hunger, poverty and excess deaths, a report has found.

Owing to luxury yachts, private jets and investments in polluting industries, the consumption of the world’s wealthiest people is also making it increasingly difficult to limit global heating to 1.5C.

If everyone on Earth emitted planet-warming gases at the same rate as the average billionaire, the remaining carbon budget to stay within 1.5C would be gone in less than two days, the Oxfam analysis said, rather than current estimates of four years if carbon emissions remain as they are today.

Preceding a budget in the UK, a presidential election in the US and the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, the anti-poverty group’s examination of carbon inequality calls on governments to tax the super-rich in order to curtail excessive consumption and generate revenue for the transition to clean energy, and to compensate those worst affected by global heating.

Oxfam’s research found that the world’s fifty richest billionaires produce on average more carbon emissions in under three hours than the average British person does in their entire lifetime. On average, they take 184 private jet flights in a single year, spending 425 hours in the air. This produced as much carbon as the average person in the world would in 300 years. Their luxury yachts emitted as much carbon as the average person would in 860 years.

The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s two private jets spent nearly 25 days in the air over a 12-month period and released as much carbon as a US Amazon employee would emit in 207 years.

Two jets of Elon Musk, the second richest person in the world and Tesla chief, jointly discharged as much CO₂ in the same period as 834 years’ worth of emissions generated by an average person.

Meanwhile, the three yachts of the Walton family, heirs of the Walmart retail chain, had a combined carbon footprint in one year of 18,000 tonnes – an amount similar to that of 1,714 Walmart shopworkers.

Ahead of the Labour government’s first budget statement on Wednesday, Oxfam is calling on the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to increase taxes on “climate-polluting extreme wealth”, starting with private jets and superyachts, to raise funds which could be used to tackle the climate crisis.

In response, a UK Treasury spokesperson said “We do not comment on speculation around tax changes outside of fiscal events”.

The Oxfam researchers developed a methodology for calculating the emissions from yachts that included data on the size of the vessel, engine specifications, fuel type, hours at sea and even generators for hot tubs and air conditioning for helicopter hangars.

“One of the key findings for us is that superyachts are by far the most polluting toy that a billionaire can own, except perhaps for a rocket ship,” said Alex Maitland, one of the authors of the report.

Far more destructive still are the greenhouse gas emissions from the investments of the ultra-rich, which are 340 times higher than the CO₂ from their yachts and jets.

On average, the portfolios of the 50 billionaires in the study were almost twice as polluting as an investment in the main US stock index. Almost 40% of their shareholdings were in emissions-intensive industries such as oil, mining, shipping and cement. Many of these companies also hire lobbyists and marketing professionals to delay or disrupt action on the climate.

Oxfam says investment is also the area that has the greatest potential for positive change because, unlike most poor and middle-income people, billionaires have a choice about how to use their money. If they were to switch their holdings into low-carbon-intensity funds, their investment emissions would be 13 times lower.

The report also projects the deadly consequences of carbon inequality: in the coming century, 1.5 million excess deaths will be caused by the consumption emissions of the richest 1% – those with incomes of at least $140,000 (£108,000) – between 2015–19.

It says the past three decades of consumption emissions of this wealthy group have caused global economic output to fall by $2.9tn and crop losses equivalent to the calorific needs of 14.5 million people a year.

Chiara Liguori, Oxfam’s senior climate justice policy adviser, said: “The evidence is clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fuelling inequality, hunger and threatening lives.

“It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution is fuelling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal.”

The findings are the latest in a series of annual carbon inequality reports by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

As the Guardian reported last year, the wealthiest 1% – who tend to live climate-insulated, air-conditioned lives, mostly in the global north – produce as much carbon pollution as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest and most vulnerable two-thirds of the human population, who predominantly live in poorer countries in the global south.

The latest report stresses the need to address the climate and inequality crises alongside carbon taxes on high-emitting industries, higher income taxes on the super-rich and restrictions on the use of private jets and luxury yachts.

Liguori said: “This report shows that fairer taxes on extreme wealth are crucial to accelerate climate action and fight inequality – starting with private jets and super-yachts.

“It’s clear these luxury toys aren’t just symbols of excess; they’re a direct threat to people and the planet.”

Timothée Chalamet made a surprise appearance at his own lookalike contest in lower Manhattan on Sunday, a crowded event that drew an order to disperse from police and at least one arrest.

Flanked by bodyguards, the actor posed for photos with his high-cheeked, curly haired doppelgängers, some of whom had dressed as Willy Wonka and Paul Atreides – characters that Chalamet has played in Wonka and the Dune movies. At times, adoring fans heaped their attention on the lookalikes, apparently thinking they were face-to-face with the real Chalamet.

The event, advertised on flyers around New York, was one of several lookalike competitions hosted by YouTube personality Anthony Po. As word spread on social media, thousands of people RSVP’d to the event, which promised $50 to the winner.

But minutes after the competition began – and before the actor made his entrance – police ordered the large group to disperse from Washington Square Park, and organizers were slapped with a $500 fine for an “unpermitted costume contest”. At least one contestant was taken away in handcuffs, though police did not immediately say why.

“It started off as a silly joke and now it’s turned pandemonium,” said Paige Nguyen, a producer for the YouTube creator.

Most of the wannabe-Chalamets and spectators relocated to a new park.

On a makeshift stage, the look-alikes were asked about their romantic plans with Kylie Jenner. Jenner and Chalamet are said to be a couple. They were also asked to demonstrate French proficiency and what they’d do to make the world a better place.

Eventually, the audience picked a winner: Miles Mitchell, a Staten Island resident and college senior. Dressed in a purple Willy Wonka outfit, he tossed candy from a briefcase to throngs of young admirers.

“I’m excited and I’m also overwhelmed,” Mitchell said. “There were so many good lookalikes. It was really a toss-up.”

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court allegedly responded to a formal complaint of sexual misconduct by trying to persuade the alleged victim to deny the claims, the Guardian has been told.

Multiple ICC staff with knowledge of the allegations against Karim Khan said the prosecutor and another official close to him repeatedly urged the woman to disavow claims about his behaviour towards her.

The alleged attempts to deter the woman from formally pursuing the claims took place in phone calls and in person, and came after Khan learned court authorities had been made aware of allegations of misconduct, four sources said.

At the time, the chief prosecutor had been advised to avoid one-on-one contact with the alleged victim after an aborted internal inquiry into the matter.

Contacted by the Guardian for comment, Khan denied asking the woman to withdraw any allegations. His lawyers said: “Our client denies the whole of the allegations and we are most concerned the exposure of a confidential and closed internal matter is designed to undermine his high-profile ongoing work at a delicate time.”

After reports of alleged sexual misconduct began to circulate in the media in recent days, Khan denied the claims in a public statement that said he and the court had been “subject to a wide range of attacks and threats”. In anonymous briefings, court officials close to the prosecutor have suggested he may have been the target of a smear campaign.

“There is no truth to suggestions of such misconduct,” Khan’s statement said. “I have worked in diverse contexts for 30 years and there has never been such a complaint lodged against me by anyone.”

The woman at the heart of the allegations – who ICC colleagues describe as a well-regarded lawyer in her 30s who worked directly for Khan – has declined requests for comment.

But multiple sources familiar with the situation said she told colleagues she declined the alleged requests to disavow the claims. She believed the alleged approaches by Khan and another ICC official were part of an attempt to make her say that the claims against the prosecutor had been fabricated, the sources added.

According to a document seen by the Guardian, the accusations against Khan, 54, include unwanted sexual touching and “abuse” over an extended period. They include an alleged incident in which he is said to have “pressed his tongue” into the woman’s ear. Khan denies such allegations of misconduct.

Four ICC sources familiar with the allegations said they also include coercive sexual behaviour and abuse of authority.

The Guardian has interviewed 11 current and former ICC officials familiar with the case, as well as diplomatic sources and friends of the alleged victim. All declined to be identified because they were not authorised to discuss the allegations, or because they wanted to protect the woman.

Multiple sources said misreporting about the allegations and efforts to politicise the situation have been deeply distressing for the woman, who is said to have initially held back on pursuing a complaint against Khan over concerns about reprisals, and fears it could be exploited by Israel or opponents of the court.

Sources who know the alleged victim said she has been left traumatised by the situation and is “experiencing severe emotional distress”.

“She never wanted any of this,” one person close to her said. “But the complaint filed against her wishes, followed by Khan’s denials and attempts to suppress the allegations, have forced her into a very difficult position.”

The public emergence of the allegations comes at an intensely sensitive moment for the ICC, a court of last resort that prosecutes individuals accused of atrocities.

A panel of three ICC judges is weighing politically explosive requests by Khan to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

The ICC, which is headquartered in The Hague, now faces an unprecedented crisis amid growing internal strife over the handling of the allegations and apparent attempts by the court’s opponents to weaponise them.

Critics of the court have seized upon the allegations, which Khan first learned about weeks before his decision in May to request arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, his defence minister and three Hamas leaders.

Khan has stopped short of explicitly accusing Israel of being behind the allegations, but in his statement denying misconduct he noted that he and the court have been the target of “a wide range of recent attacks and threats” in recent months.

The Guardian revealed earlier this year how Israel’s intelligence agencies ran a decade-long campaign against the ICC that included threats and attempts to smear senior staff. Against this backdrop, ICC officials close to Khan are strongly hinting the allegations may be part of a smear campaign by Israel.

However, in a months-long investigation into the allegations against Khan, the Guardian has found no evidence that Israel, or any other country, had any involvement in the underlying allegations – although there does appear to have been a subsequent effort by anonymous actors to brief journalists and post leaks online.

Online leaks

Last week, as leaks about Khan’s alleged conduct began to appear, press reports and social media posts minimised and misconstrued the allegations, according to sources familiar with the alleged victim’s accounts.

References to allegations contained within a report by a so-called “whistleblower”, they said, included inaccuracies. Several media organisations received, and then published, the same incomplete information.

The Guardian can reveal a more detailed picture of the allegations and of the complex sequence of events that ultimately led to aspects of the claims leaking online and into the pages of rightwing media outlets.

According to three sources familiar with the situation, the allegations of sexual misconduct relate to Khan’s behaviour towards the woman between a period of approximately April 2023 and April 2024.

“The allegations do not relate to a single or a couple of incidents, but misconduct taking place over a period of several months,” one ICC source said.

The alleged victim told colleagues that, after initial concerns about how Khan had sought to hold her hand while on a work trip in London, the prosecutor is alleged to have made repeated attempts to initiate unwanted sexual contact.

The alleged incidents are said to have escalated over time and occurred in his office at the ICC’s headquarters, in hotel rooms on overseas work trips, as well as at his home in The Hague.

Three sources said the woman reported to colleagues detailed descriptions of alleged unwanted sexual touching, including occasions when Khan would allegedly grope her and put his tongue in her ear.

According to an ICC document describing the allegations, she reported that she tried to make excuses to avoid being alone with Khan, but attempts to distance herself from him would lead to negative consequences in the workplace.

After returning from an overseas work trip with the prosecutor in April, the woman spoke in confidence to two close colleagues after they noticed she was upset and gave a detailed account of Khan’s alleged conduct.

The alleged victim told colleagues at the time that she was reluctant to pursue a formal complaint as she feared that doing so could have negative consequences for her, her family and the work of the international court.

Within days of confiding in the two colleagues, however, Khan and the ICC’s independent oversight mechanism (IOM), a watchdog that investigates alleged misconduct, had been made aware of the claims.

Khan was told one evening in early May that serious allegations would soon be shared with the IOM when a small group of staff from his office approached him, according to multiple people familiar with the events.

The meeting, which took place at Khan’s home in The Hague, occurred without the woman’s knowledge or consent. “The alleged victim was kept in the dark,” one source said.

Investigation

Three days after Khan was given advance warning of the allegations, IOM investigators hastily summoned the alleged victim to a hotel in The Hague, informing her they had received a report of alleged misconduct.

According to a record of the meeting, the woman told investigators she had been blind-sided by their approach and had serious concerns about their handling of the situation.

ICC sources said the alleged victim had previously expressed concerns about the competence of the IOM, a body that was not wholly trusted by female staff at the court.

Two days after meeting with the alleged victim, the IOM decided against opening a full investigation into the claims. The body recently said in its annual report the woman “declined to pursue a formal complaint” even after it was suggested an investigation could be “referred to an external entity”.

However, records relating to the investigation seen by the Guardian suggest the woman agreed to meet the IOM for a second time, shortly before investigators closed the matter. An external investigation was not offered at that stage, the records suggest.

In a recent statement about the IOM investigation, the court’s governing body said that, following a conversation with the alleged victim, “the IOM was not in a position to proceed with an investigation at that stage. Measures to safeguard everyone’s rights were recommended”.

Two sources said those recommendations, which were sent to Khan in writing, included that he minimise contact with the woman and avoid spending time with her alone, at night or while travelling on work trips.

However, after the alleged victim returned to work, the prosecutor discussed the situation with her in several in-person meetings and calls, sources said. Another official within his office also encouraged her to distance herself from the claims, telling her that Khan was “very scared” and “nervous” the allegations would eventually leak.

Between May and September, according to three sources, Khan and the other official close to him encouraged the alleged victim to write a letter disavowing the allegations against the prosecutor.

At one stage, the official is said to have told her that if she wrote such a letter it would normalise her working relationship with the prosecutor. He allegedly advised her to state in writing: “I have never said this. He never assaulted me”.

The official is understood to dispute the suggestion he discussed the matter with the alleged victim. Lawyers for Khan also denied the episode. “We confirm that neither our client, nor any person acting on his behalf, or who reports to him, asked for any such letter to be written, nor did they ask the person to withdraw any allegations,” they said.

“Our client has fully complied with internal processes and allowed these matters to be handled in an impartial manner by authorities independent of him.”

‘New theory’

Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which adopts a conservative and pro-Israel line, published a leak of information about the allegations based on the questionable “whistleblower” report that has been circulated to the media.

The newspaper speculated on what it called “a new theory”: that Khan sought arrest warrants against Netanyahu to divert attention from sexual misconduct allegations that threatened to precipitate his resignation.

One official with knowledge of the ICC’s Palestine investigation described that suggestion as “inaccurate”. Another well-placed source pointed out that the key decisions to seek arrest warrants for senior Israeli and Hamas figures had already been made by the time Khan was informed of the misconduct complaint.

By that stage, the source said, applications for the warrants were already in the process of being drafted.

Multiple current and former ICC officials expressed concerns that Israel and its allies would seek to exploit the controversy surrounding the embattled chief prosecutor, with little regard for due process for the woman at the centre of the situation.

Many staff within the court are understood to be supportive of Khan’s decision to request the arrest warrants and applauded him for asserting the independence of the court in the face of significant political pressure.

But many in the same workforce also have deep concerns about the accusations he is facing and the court’s handling of the situation. Last week, the ICC’s staff union called for a “prompt, independent investigation led by an external panel free from any potential conflict of interest”.

Khan has said he would be willing, if asked, to cooperate with a new inquiry.

In a statement, a spokesperson for his office added: “It is essential, in particular in the context in which the [prosecutor] is presently operating, that any reports of this nature are addressed in a formal independent process, protecting the rights of all persons.”

On Friday, the Associated Press reported the woman at the centre of the allegations is now in touch with the assembly of states parties (ASP), the court’s governing body which has the ultimate say about Khan’s future. A diplomatic source said the ASP had yet to initiate a new investigation.

That investigation may be the next step in the process, resulting in Khan facing a second formal inquiry that would be expected to question the prosecutor and alleged victim about the allegations, and conduct other investigative work, prior to reaching any conclusion about Khan’s innocence or guilt.

In a statement issued last week, the ASP’s president, Päivi Kaukoranta, said “any reports of misconduct are taken very seriously”. She asked people to respect the integrity and confidentiality of internal processes, “including any further possible steps as necessary”.