International Criminal Court comes out fighting in wake of US sanctions
The
International Criminal Court
(ICC) has described sanctions imposed by the US as 'a clear attempt to undermine its judicial independence'.
Within hours of the announcement on Thursday evening, the European Union came out strongly in support of the court, praising it as 'a cornerstone of international justice' whose independence and integrity must be protected.'
In a post on X, European Council president Antonio Costa wrote: 'The ICC does not stand against nations, it stands against impunity. The rule of law most prevail over the rule of power.'
The sanctions were imposed by US secretary of state
Marco Rubio
on four judges for what he called 'illegitimate actions' targeting the United States and Israel.
READ MORE
The judges were named as Beti Hohler of Slovenia, Luz de Carmen Ibānez Carranza of Peru, Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda and Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin.
Hohler and Alapini-Gansou were two of the judges who authorised the ICC arrest warrants for Israeli premier,
Binyamin Netanyahu
and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, accused of war crimes in
Gaza
following the
Hamas
attack in Israel on October 7th, 2023.
Bossa and Ibāñez Carranza were involved in authorising an ICC investigation into alleged abuses by US troops and CIA officials in Afghanistan.
'As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC's illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel', Rubio alleged.
'The ICC is politicised and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies.'
Such assertions, he said, were 'dangerous' and infringed upon 'the sovereignty and national security of the United States'.
In February the US also imposed sanctions on ICC prosecutor Karim Khan for his role in pursuing the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. It froze his bank accounts, left him without email, and barred him from entering the US or doing business with US companies or agencies.
The latest sanctions on the judges were imposed under the same executive order signed by President Trump. As a result of that order, Americans who work for the court in The Hague have been warned they could face arrest if they return home.
The International Federation of Human Rights representative to the ICC, Danya Chaikel, noted that the sanctions being employed were originally designed to 'disrupt terrorist networks, weapons traffickers and human rights abusers – not international justice institutions'.
Neither the US nor Israel is a member of the ICC and they do not recognise the court's jurisdiction.
In an unrelated development, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan took leave of absence last month pending an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct.
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Irish Times
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The Encampments director Kei Pritsker: ‘The students risked a lot to stand with the people of Gaza. That's tremendous'
The Palestine solidarity encampments at Columbia University , in uptown Manhattan, were not the first such US student protests during the continuing Gaza conflict. But they came to be the most impactful. Beginning in April 2024, the occupation saw tents spreading across the Morningside Heights campus of the Ivy League institution. Flags and banners were unfurled. Chants went up. That first protest, seeking Columbia's financial divestment from Israel, was broken up when Minouche Shafik, the university's president, authorised the New York Police Department to enter the campus and conduct mass arrests. Nothing like this had happened since the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War. 'Columbia wasn't actually the first campus to set up an encampment,' Kei Pritsker, director of a fine new documentary on the protests, confirms. 'Stanford University, Vanderbilt University – they also had encampments going. But the whole world saw how Columbia had called the police on their own students – students who paid tuition to study at that school, only to be arrested by their own faculty, by their own school administration.' Pritsker's The Encampments stands as a lucid, sober examination of a still-developing story. The director, unapologetically on the side of the protesters, reflects that mood in his own conversation. He lays out the case calmly. The anger is implied, not explicit. READ MORE 'People saw this happening in broad daylight,' he says. 'These videos were circulated around the world. There was so much outrage over the treatment of students who weren't bothering anyone, who were protesting peacefully. The hypocrisy of it all. The fact that the students were saying, 'Hey, we're doing this in the spirit of education.'' The protests spread across the United States' universities and then across the world. The students in Manhattan returned and tensions continued to mount. 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