The US placed sanctions on two officials with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On Tuesday, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio announced that the US would sanction Tomoko Akane of Japan, the ICC president, and Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, an ICC senior trial lawyer. He said the sanctions were a part of a “diplomatic campaign to dismantle the ICC’s threat to our national sovereignty.”
Rubio added Akane and Seye had “directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”
The State Department announced it would target the ICC last month. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to US sovereignty,” a statement released by the State Department on Monday explained. “The campaign will feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.”
“The ICC poses an intolerable threat to US sovereignty – it claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America’s national interest,” it added.
The ICC was established to prosecute suspected war criminals who are not held accountable for their actions by their governments. Countries that are members of the court are required to comply with the ICC’s arrest warrants.
In response to potential investigations of US war crimes committed in the Middle East, Congress passed the Hague Invasion Act, which grants the President power to use military force to retrieve Americans detained by the ICC. The US is not a party to the ICC.
The ICC has also issued warrants for Palestinian officials for crimes committed on October 7, 2023, and Israeli officials for the genocide in Gaza. While Israel has killed the Palestinian officials targeted by the court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the ICC.
