Staff at the International Criminal Court have described the sweeping effect of US sanctions on their daily lives.
Judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been cut off by banks, credit card companies and tech giants like Amazon as a result of sanctions brought by the United States President Donald Trump administration over war crimes investigations into Israeli and US officials.
The Associated Press news agency reported on Friday on the sweeping and punitive effect of the US sanctions on nine staff members – including six judges and the chief prosecutor – of The Hague court.
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The measures, introduced in an executive order by Trump earlier this year, block their access to basic financial services and everyday activities like online shopping and email, and prevent them from entering the US, subjecting them to the same restrictions as those brought against figures like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who nevertheless was allowed to visit the US state of Alaska for a summit with Trump in August.
“Your whole world is restricted,” Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, one of the ICC officials targeted by the sanctions, told AP.
The ICC, the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal with 125 member states, was targeted with the restrictions in February, with the White House saying the move was in response to the “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
The order followed the ICC’s move to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed during its genocidal war on Gaza.
Neither Israel nor the US is a member of the ICC.
‘Now I’m on a list with those implicated in terrorism’
Prost, who was named in the latest round of sanctions in August, told AP that she had lost access to her credit cards, had purchased e-books vanish from her device, and Amazon’s Alexa stopped responding to her.
“It’s the uncertainty,” she said. “They are small annoyances, but they accumulate.”
Prost had been sanctioned for voting to allow the court’s investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan, including by US soldiers and intelligence operatives.
“I’ve worked all my life in criminal justice, and now I’m on a list with those implicated in terrorism and organised crime,” she said.
Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza, a sanctioned Peruvian judge, said the US travel sanctions, which also extended to family members, meant her daughters could no longer attend conferences in the US.
The sanctions threaten businesses and individuals with substantial US fines and prison time if they provide sanctioned people with “financial, material, or technological support”, driving them to withdraw services to the targeted individuals.
“You’re never quite sure when your card is not working somewhere, whether this is just a glitch or whether this is the sanction,” deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan told the AP.
Reports of threats over warrants
The sanctions are reportedly only one of the measures that have been levelled against the court in an attempt to exert pressure over the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
In July, the Middle East Eye (MEE) website reported that the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was warned that he and the ICC would be “destroyed” if the warrants were not withdrawn.
The threat reportedly came from Nicholas Kaufman, a British-Israeli defence lawyer at the court linked to a Netanyahu adviser. Khan said the Israeli leader’s legal adviser told him he was “authorised” to make Khan a proposal that would allow the prosecutor to “climb down the tree”, the news website reported.
The site reported in August that Khan had also been privately warned by then-British Foreign Secretary David Cameron in April the previous year that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, while in May 2024, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also “threatened” Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants.
In May, Khan’s office announced he had taken a leave of absence pending the conclusion of a UN-led investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against him, with two deputy prosecutors assuming his responsibilities.
His lawyers said he rejected all claims of wrongdoing and had only stepped aside temporarily due to intense media scrutiny.
