White House reprisals against the ICC and its chief prosecutor for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for war crimes have greatly reduced the court’s ability to function, according to multiple news outlets.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad Khan addressing U.N. Security Council in 2022. (UN Photo/Evan Schneider)
U.S. President Donald Trump’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its chief prosecutor have reportedly halted the tribunal’s work.
The Trump administration sanctioned the court in February as a result of the ICC issuing arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
[Numerous member countries of the ICC, along with human right groups and European and U.N. officials expressed support for the court at the time and decried Trump’s move.]
In slapping sanctions on the ICC, the Trump administration labeled the arrest warrants against Gallant and Netanyahu “baseless.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with Netanyahu and Gallant in Tel Aviv on Oct. 13, 2023. (DoD, Chad J. McNeeley, CC BY 2.0)
According to reporting by PBS, the ICC has faced significant challenges to its work as a result of these sanctions, which includes Microsoft blocking Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s access to his email and having his bank accounts frozen.
U.S. staffers in the Hague have been told they would risk arrest if they ever make a trip back to their home country, according to the same report.
The ICC is currently the only permanent international court that is tasked with the prosecution of individuals for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.
A few days ago, Khan, [the only ICC official named by the Trump sanctions] informed the court he would be on leave amid pending investigations into alleged sexual misconduct.
In Khan’s absence, Deputy Prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang have assumed leadership, according to an ICC statement, which says the court’s work continues [and that it “will continue to rely on the support and collaboration of the Rome Statute community, and all partners, in carrying the Office’s mandate forward.”]
Trump’s executive order slapping sanctions on the ICC mentions that neither Israel nor the U.S. are party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and therefore do not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.
The U.S. has established policies that are hostile to the ICC, including the notable American Service-Members Protection Act, dubbed by many as the “Hague Invasion Act, signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002, a year before the US invasion of Iraq.
The act authorizes the president of the United States to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
Another example of Zionist lobby pressure ablating all sensibility in US Foreign Policy and governance.
As a citizen of the United States, I am appalled and ashamed of the lawlessness of the U.S. government and its allies. At the time of the American Revolution against England, John Adams famously declared that the new country would have “a government of laws, not men.” It meant that the Constitution would be the governing law and not subject to amendments except by law and the parties constituted to defend those laws. But today’s U.S. government is demanding loyalty to an individual person, i.e., the Executive branch, the President. Very much in line with Hitler’s Fuhrerprinzip, Donald Trump (and not only he) demands loyalty to his person. One could very well say that the collective west demands the same.
“…The ICC is currently the only permanent international court that is tasked with the prosecution of individuals for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide…”
The ICC is intergovernmental and has no means of enforcement. It relies on the participation of the great powers.
Sadly, the world’s most notorious war criminals such as Tony Blair, Bush Jr., Netanyahu, and many others walk free, making lots of money. As has been noted in the past, the only ones prosecuted in the ICC are those from small and weak countries, who have run afoul of western interests.
The idea of an ICC is laudable, alas great power politics prevents the enforcement of justice. If the “law” were applied equally, every living former US pres. and PMs of the UK and Israel would be locked up, along with hundreds of others from the US/UK/Israel. And many in the current DT2 regime, including the Orange Emperor, would be locked up as well, but that aint never gonna happen.
Not only Israel but the USA itself should be expelled from the UN because of their refusal to keep to any of UN obligations and their mockery of international law which is essential to enable any semblance of justice.
The US insistence on its right to veto in any organisation to which it belongs, and its support of Zionists regardless of their behaviour makes impossible a solution to the genocidal mania now in place