US President Donald Trump accused the Worldwide Prison Courtroom of “illegitimate and baseless actions focusing on America and our shut ally Israel.”
US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an government order imposing sanctions on the Worldwide Prison Courtroom over investigations of Israel, a detailed U.S. ally.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel are members of or acknowledge the courtroom. Israel is a detailed U.S. ally and the courtroom lately issued an arrest warrant in opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his actions towards Palestinians in Gaza after the Hamas assault in opposition to Israel in October 2023.
Tens of 1000’s of Palestinians, together with youngsters, have been killed throughout the Israeli navy’s response.
The order Trump signed accuses the ICC of participating in “illegitimate and baseless actions focusing on America and our shut ally Israel” and of abusing its energy by issuing “baseless arrest warrants” in opposition to Netanyahu and his former protection minister, Yoav Gallant.
“The ICC has no jurisdiction over the USA or Israel,” the order states, including that the courtroom had set a “harmful precedent” with its actions in opposition to each international locations.
Trump’s motion got here as Netanyahu was visiting Washington. He and Trump held talks Tuesday on the White Home, and Netanyahu spent a few of Thursday assembly with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The order says the U.S. will impose “tangible and important penalties” on these accountable for the ICC’s “transgressions.” Actions could embrace blocking property and property and never permitting ICC officers, workers and kin to enter the USA.
Human rights activists stated sanctioning courtroom officers would have a chilling impact and run counter to U.S. pursuits in different battle zones the place the courtroom is investigating.
“Victims of human rights abuses all over the world flip to the Worldwide Prison Courtroom once they have nowhere else to go, and President Trump’s government order will make it more durable for them to search out justice,” stated Charlie Hogle, employees lawyer with American Civil Liberties Union’s Nationwide Safety Undertaking. “The order additionally raises severe First Modification issues as a result of it places folks in the USA vulnerable to harsh penalties for serving to the courtroom establish and examine atrocities dedicated anyplace, by anybody.”
Hogle stated the order “is an assault on each accountability and free speech.”
Like Israel, the U.S. isn’t among the many courtroom’s 124 members and has lengthy harbored suspicions {that a} “World Courtroom” of unelected judges might arbitrarily prosecute U.S. officers. A 2002 legislation authorizes the Pentagon to liberate any American or U.S. ally held by the courtroom. In 2020, Trump sanctioned chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, over her resolution to open an inquiry into battle crimes dedicated by all sides, together with the U.S., in Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, these sanctions have been lifted underneath President Joe Biden, and the U.S. started to tepidly cooperate with the tribunal — particularly after Khan in 2023 charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with battle crimes in Ukraine.
Any sanctions might cripple the courtroom by making it more durable for its investigators to journey and by compromising U.S.-developed expertise to safeguard proof. The courtroom final 12 months suffered a serious cyberattack that left workers unable to entry recordsdata for weeks.
Some European international locations are pushing again. The Netherlands, in a press release late final 12 months, referred to as on different ICC members “to cooperate to mitigate dangers of those doable sanctions, in order that the courtroom can proceed to hold out its work and fulfil its mandate.”
