Washington. The United States government yesterday imposed sanctions against the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Japanese Tomoko Akane, and the Senegalese prosecutor Abdoulaye Seye, the court's main trial lawyer and in charge of investigating the crimes committed by Israel during its offensive in Gaza, reported the State Department headed by Marco Rubio, who described the body as a "corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court."
The ICC charged that Washington's measures “undermine the rule of law” and stated that it remains “unwavering and firmly stands by its staff and the victims of unimaginable atrocities.”
“When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order that is at risk,” the court stated in a statement.
Rubio insisted that the ICC “has maliciously abused its authority and has exceeded its functions.”
Regarding the sanctioned judge and prosecutor, he assured that “they have participated directly in the ICC's attempts to investigate, arrest, detain or persecute officials whose governments do not recognize the jurisdiction” of that court.
It stated that the “comprehensive government campaign to dismantle the threat the ICC poses to national sovereignty will be far-reaching” and called on its member states to join in and “end their funding and participation in this unaccountable court.”
At the same time, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) included both members of the ICC on its list of specially designated and blocked persons (SDN).
The court, based in The Hague, was created in 2002 by the international community to try war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as genocide. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the court and established its jurisdiction.
The persecution, in defense of the Israeli premier
Donald Trump's administration began its persecution against the ICC last year with targeted sanctions on several of its officials, including prosecutors and judges, following the arrest warrants issued by the court in 2024 against Israeli Prime Minister and since fugitive from this court, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Tel Aviv Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as an earlier investigation into US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Netanyahu praised the US measures against what he called the “illegitimate overreach of the International Criminal Court,” adding that it had become “a sham court that cloaks its abuse of power in the language of international law.”
Rubio mentioned last month that Washington would intensify its efforts to undermine the ICC and argued that the court posed a threat to US personnel enforcing Trump's hardline immigration policies or carrying out raids on vessels accused of transporting drugs.
Amnesty International said these sanctions against the court are a “reprehensible attack on the international justice system” and a “growing campaign to hinder its quest for accountability,” Al Jazeera reported.
For his part, the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, described the violence carried out by Israeli settlers in the reoccupied West Bank as “terrorism,” in an unusual rebuke that occurred in the midst of the siege of Ridi's family home for a week by those settlers, Al Jazeera reported.
