A defiant Trump slaps sanctions on ICC officials

ICC

The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and one of her top aides for continuing to investigate war crimes allegations against Americans.

The sanctions were immediately denounced by the court, the United Nations and human rights advocates.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the moves as part of the administration’s pushback against the tribunal, based in The Hague, for investigations into the United States and its allies. The sanctions include a freeze on assets held in the US or subject to US law and target prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the court’s head of jurisdiction, Phakiso Mochochoko.

He said the court, to which the United States has never been a party, was “a thoroughly broken and corrupt institution.”

“We will not tolerate its illegitimate attempts to subject Americans to its jurisdiction,” Pompeo told reporters at a State Department news conference. In addition to the sanctions imposed on Bensouda and Mochochoko, Pompeo said people who provide them with “material support” in investigating Americans could also face US penalties.

Pompeo had previously imposed a travel ban on Bensouda and other tribunal employees over investigations into allegations of torture and other crimes by Americans in Afghanistan.

The Hague-based court and the head of its governing board decried the step as an assault on the rule of law and the international system set up by the Treaty of Rome that created the tribunal in 2002.

The sanctions “are another attempt to interfere with the court’s judicial and prosecutorial independence and crucial work to address grave crimes of concern to the international community,” the ICC said in a statement. “These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks.”

O-Gon Kwon, the president of the court’s Assembly of States Parties, called the move “unprecedented and unacceptable” and an affront to efforts to combat impunity for war crimes.

“They only serve to weaken our common endeavor to fight impunity for mass atrocities,” he said, adding that the assembly planned to convene shortly to reaffirm the members’ “unstinting support for the court” and its employees.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted Pompeo’s statement “with concern.” He stressed the UN expects the US to abide by its agreement with the UN, which allows the prosecutor to come to UN on ICC business.

In March 2019, Pompeo ordered the revocation or denial of visas to ICC investigating allegations of war crimes and other abuses by US forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere. He also said he might revoke the visas of those who seek action against Israel.

Prosecutors have been conducting a preliminary inquiry since 2015 in Palestine, including Israel’s settlement policy, crimes allegedly committed by both sides in the 2014 Gaza conflict and Hamas rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians.

The court was created to hold accountable perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in cases where adequate judicial systems were not available. The US refuses to join because it fears the court might be used for politically motivated prosecutions of American troops and officials.