ICC slams United States sanctions against top court staff

The International Criminal Court on Wednesday slammed the latest United States sanctions targeting senior ICC staff, including its president.

It described the move as a “flagrant attack” on the global tribunal's independence and vowed to continue seeking justice for atrocities around the world.

“We will never give up, and the court took measures to prepare itself against the sanctions and limit as much as possible the effect of sanctions on its activities,” said ICC president Tomoko Akane.

The US State Department on Tuesday said it had hit Akane, a Japanese national, and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is from Senegal, with the restrictions.

The measures bar them from entering the US and from conducting transactions in the US financial system.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has already slapped sanctions on 9 of the ICC's 18 judges, both its deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor, and one other prosecution office staffer.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he will pressure the court’s 125 member states to withdraw from the institution, sanction organisations that work with it, and ban staff from traveling to the US.

Based in The Hague, the court was set up in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

In a statement, the court said that when “judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.”

Washington, which is not a party to the international treaty that established the ICC, accuses it of being “politicised” and of overstepping its mandate.

The sanctions are widely seen as a response to ICC investigations targeting Israel, a US ally. In 2024, the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza.