Coming from him and others like him, this is not a surprise. That women judge on the ICC in South Africa just got a Nobel Peace Prize due to her saying Israel commits genocide against Gaza
US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday, 9 October, hours after one of its former judges won the Nobel Peace Prize, South Africa’s Navi Pillay, putting Washington on a diplomatic collision course with European allies.
The ICC’s deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, condemned the sanctions and said they would not halt the tribunal's work.
The Trump administration has long been hostile to the court, which was founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and has previously imposed sanctions on its prosecutors and judges. Friday’s move would go far further, by potentially punishing companies that provide services to the court itself.
“President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, first published by Reuters.
“That is why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”
ICC deputy prosecutor Khan told Reuters the sanctions “must be condemned”.
“The sanctions are intended to undermine the rule of law internationally and the work that an independent judicial institution is doing,” Khan said. “Our work will continue across all our situations, our investigations and our prosecutions.”
Washington has denounced the ICC over arrest warrants issued for Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a past investigation into actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan, which the ICC says is “deprioritised”.