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.
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 U.S. or subject to U.S. 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 U.S. penalties.
Pompeo had previously imposed a travel ban on Bensouda and other tribunal employees because of its investigation into allegations of torture and other crimes by Americans in Afghanistan.
Human rights groups and others have condemned the administration’s moves against the court and Wednesday’s announcement was immediately met with withering criticism from them.
“Today’s announcement is designed to do what this administration does best — bully and intimidate,” said Daniel Balson of Amnesty International USA. “It penalizes not only the ICC, but civil society actors working for justice alongside the court worldwide.”
“Today’s reckless actions constitute a demand that the U.S. government be granted a political carve-out of impunity for nationals accused of having committed crimes under international law in Afghanistan,” he said. “No one responsible for the most serious crimes under international law should be able to hide from accountability, under a cloak of impunity.”
Richard Dicker, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch, called it “a stunning perversion of U.S. sanctions, devised to penalize rights abusers and kleptocrats, to persecute those tasked with prosecuting international crimes.”
“The Trump administration has twisted these sanctions to obstruct justice, not only for certain war crimes victims, but for atrocity victims anywhere looking to the International Criminal Court for justice,” he said.
Daniel Balson, advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, said:
“The Trump administration’s decision to enact sanctions against senior ICC staff is another brazen attack against international justice. The court is made up of legal professionals who have dedicated their professional lives in pursuit of justice for victims and survivors of some of the most horrific crimes, including crimes against humanity. They should be commended for their commitment, not subjected to a punitive campaign of intimidation. Grotesquely, the White House’s actions may dissuade survivors of human rights abuses from demanding justice, and create a chilling effect on those who would support their efforts.
“Today’s announcement is designed to do what this administration does best- bully and intimidate. It penalizes not only the ICC, but civil society actors working for justice alongside the court worldwide.
“Today’s reckless actions constitute a demand that the U.S. government be granted a political carve out of impunity for nationals accused of having committed crimes under international law in Afghanistan. No one responsible for the most serious crimes under international law should be able to hide from accountability, under a cloak of impunity.”
In March 2019, Pompeo ordered the revocation or denial of visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate allegations of war crimes and other abuses by U.S. 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 the Palestinian territories, 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 U.S. has not joined the ICC because of concerns the court might be used for politically motivated prosecutions of American troops and officials.
Subsequent U.S. administrations have reiterated that stance, although some, including President Barack Obama’s, have agreed to limited cooperation with court. The Trump administration, however, has been openly hostile to the tribunal and lashed out against Bensouda along with others for pursuing prosecutions of Americans.
(AP)
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See who’s against it: Daniel Balson of Amnesty International, and Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch, two vicious anti-American and anti-Israeli organizations that have no credibility whatsoever.
Amnesty used to be respectable and respected, back in the 20th century, but around 2000 it blew all its credibility when it compared the military prison at Guantanamo Bay to the Gulag, and even tried to pressure former Gulag prisoners to condemn it!
HRW has never had any credibility in the first place. It is staffed with antisemites and America-haters, and a decent person will not go wrong if he simply looks at whatever HRW says and takes the opposite stance.
The plain truth is that the ICC is an upstart organization with no authority to investigate any US or Israeli citizen. It is not a court of law. There is no world government, and no law that binds sovereign nations except what they consent to. The ICC has jurisdiction only over those countries that have consented to it; the moment it asserted jurisdiction over USA or Israeli citizens it became a criminal gang, that must be suppressed. To argue otherwise is effectively to declare war on the USA and Israel, and for US citizens to do so is sedition. The USA must protect its citizens from being “prosecuted” by this gang, by all means necessary, up to and including sending the US Armed Forces to free anyone the ICC kidnaps, and to arrest these so-called “judges”.