ICC slams US decision to sanction the court’s president and a senior prosecution lawyer

ICC slams US decision to sanction the court’s president and a senior prosecution lawyer 1 of 2 | A general view of the exterior of the International Criminal Court is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, March 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Havana, File) 2 of 2 | Judge Tomoko Akane walks before delivering the verdict in the Al Hassan case at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday Nov. 20, 2024. (Eva Plevier/Pool Photo via AP, file) By MIKE CORDER Updated 11:33 AM MESZ, August 19, 2026 Leer en español Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit The Hague, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court on Wednesday slammed the latest U.S. sanctions targeting senior ICC staff, including its president, as a “flagrant attack” on the global tribunal’s independence and vowed to continue seeking justice for atrocities around the world. The State Department announced Tuesday that it had hit ICC president Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is from Senegal, with sanctions that freeze any assets they have in U.S. jurisdictions or come into contact with the U.S. financial system. The Trump administration has now slapped sanctions on nine of the ICC’s 18 judges, both of its deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor and one other prosecution office staffer, the court said. The U.S. accuses the court of overstepping its mandate by investigating and seeking to prosecute senior military and political officials from countries, such as Israel and the United States, that are not members of the court. 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.” It said the court “will continue to fully discharge its mandate with independence and impartiality.” In a statement Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio branded the ICC “a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.” Groups sue the Trump administration over its targeting of the International Criminal Court 4 MIN READ ICC chief prosecutor removed from post over sexual misconduct allegations 1 MIN READ 16 US hits ICC president and senior prosecutor with sanctions in another move against the court 1 MIN READ 16 The move came weeks after Rubio announced that the U.S. was launching a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.” Rubio said he will pressure the court’s 125 member states to withdraw from the institution, sanction organizations that work with the court and ban staff from traveling to the United States. Since then, Venezuela and Chad have announced they plan to leave the court, bringing the number of countries to pull out of the court in the past year to five. It takes a year for a country’s decision to quit the court to be formalized. The sanctions can impact the daily lives of court officials. They prevent the ICC officials and their families from entering the United States, block their access to even basic financial services making even going to a grocery store difficult. Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, who was sanctioned last year, lost access to her credit cards, and Amazon’s Alexa stopped responding to her. “Your whole world is restricted,” she told The Associated Press after she was targeted. Japan also criticized the sanctions after Akane was sanctioned. “The announced measures are very unfortunate,” Toshihiro Kitamura, press secretary at Japan’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement Wednesday. Japan has consistently supported the ICC in its efforts to prosecute and punish the most serious crimes of concern to the international community and to uphold the rule of law, he said. “Japan will remain committed to strengthening the rule of law in the international community, while maintaining communication with related countries.” Balkees Jarrah, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, called the sanctions “the latest example of the Trump administration’s utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice.” Human Rights Watch and three other groups sued the Trump administration last week to challenge its campaign against the ICC. The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, says that Trump’s executive order last year targeting The Hague-based criminal court and the U.S. sanctions issued against a U.N. human rights expert and three Palestinian rights groups represent a “blatantly illegal attack on international justice and should be struck down,” according to a press release. Associated Press journalists Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report. MIKE CORDER Corder is a reporter in the Netherlands who covers international courts in The Hague, Dutch politics, news and sport. He has worked at The AP for more than 30 years, including seven years in Australia covering the Asia-Pacific region. mailto