US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court, accusing it of "illegal and baseless actions against America and our close ally, Israel" and of "abuse of power."
The text, released by the White House, prohibits entry into the United States to leading executives, employees and other workers at the ICC, as well as their close relatives.
The decree also provides for the freezing of any assets of these individuals in US jurisdiction.
American politicians, Republicans and Democrats, have expressed outrage over the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom President Trump welcomed to the White House on Tuesday, as well as his government's former Defense Minister Yoav Galland by the ICC last year.
ICC judges ruled that there were "reasonable" grounds to indict Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Galland for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in the Gaza Strip, which was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas incursion into southern Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.
Benjamin Netanyahu had called the issuance of the warrants an "anti-Semitic" act. Democratic former US President Joe Biden had called it "scandalous."
This is not the first time that the ICC has been targeted by Donald Trump.
During his first term as US president (2017-2021), Washington imposed sanctions on court officials, notably former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, over the opening of an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan by US military personnel. Those sanctions were lifted shortly after his successor Biden took office.
Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC, a United Nations judicial body responsible for prosecuting and trying individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow has responded by issuing arrest warrants for top officials at the UN court.
The ICC, which was established in 2002, currently has 124 member states. It has only handed down verdicts in a handful of cases.
The order was signed the week that Donald Trump caused a stir and international outcry by declaring that the US would "take control" of the Gaza Strip and "develop" the enclave economically, which has suffered immense destruction after sixteen months of war, adding that the Palestinians living there would be displaced to neighboring countries, under conditions and terms that he did not clarify.
There has been no public reaction to this stage from the ICC, nor from its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, a black sheep of the US, as well as Israel.
In December, the ICC warned that any US economic or other sanctions would "undermine" its ability to act on all cases under its jurisdiction and would endanger "its very existence."
Source: skai.gr
