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President Donald Trump has announced sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its supposed “targeting” of the U.S. and Israel.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, accusing the ICC of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”
The order puts visa and financial sanctions on people working on ICC probes of U.S. citizens or allies.
The House of Representatives voted to sanction the court in January following the arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that the court issued amid war crimes allegations in Gaza, claims Israel rejects. The court also issued a warrant for a Hamas commander, the BBC noted.
The ICC responded to the sanctions, saying that it “regrets any attempts to undermine the court’s independence, integrity and impartiality.”
The U.S. is not a member of the international court and has pushed back on numerous occasions against any jurisdiction by the court over U.S. citizens or officials.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest,” Trump’s executive order states.
“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” the order says.
The Trump administration is alleging that the ICC, which is based in the Hague in the Netherlands, is putting in place a “shameful moral equivalency” between Israel and Hamas as it issued the warrants for the leaders of Israel and the Hamas commander simultaneously according to a fact sheet shared by the White House.
The Trump administration thinks that the court is restricting Israel’s right to self-defense as it accuses the court of not looking at Iran and anti-Israel groups. The president also enacted measures to sanction the court during his first term in office, imposing sanctions on ICC officials probing if American forces were guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan. The ICC called the sanctions an “unacceptable attempt to interfere with the rule of law,” according to the BBC.
The ICC was created in 2002 following the breaking up of Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda with the intent that it was going to investigate allegations of atrocities. But the court can only handle crimes committed after July of that year when the Rome Statute went into effect and the court was established.
The U.S. and Israel are not part of the Rome Statute, which has been ratified by 120 countries and signed by another 34 countries, which may ratify it at a future date.
“Both nations are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war,” the executive order states.
“The United States unequivocally opposes and expects our allies to oppose any ICC actions against the United States, Israel, or any other ally of the United States that has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” it adds.
The executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vincent Warren, said in a statement that “Today’s order for sanctions against unnamed International Criminal Court staff and their families because they did their job in investigating U.S. torture and advancing justice for Palestinians in the face of Israel’s 15-month total assault on Gaza is a direct attack on the rule of law.”
Attorneys for the group are representing Palestinians at the ICC.
“Trump continues to make clear that he would rather protect war criminals like Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant than people subjected to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes,” Warren added. “The broad scope of the Executive Order is intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful.”
Source: independent.co.uk
