The Hague: US President Donald Trump’s executive order imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court could jeopardise trials and investigations at the world’s only permanent global tribunal for war crimes and genocide.
The order Trump signed Thursday accuses the ICC of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.” It cites the arrest warrant the ICC issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The Hague-based court condemned the move. “The Court stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and hope to millions of innocent victims of atrocities across the world,” the court said in a statement.
What is the International Criminal Court?
The court was created in 2002 to be a last stop for the most serious international crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression.
The United States and Israel are not members, but 125 other countries have signed the court’s foundational treaty, the Rome Statute. The ICC becomes involved when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory.
The court’s newest member, Ukraine, formally joined in January.
Judges at the court have convicted 11 people. Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga was the first, sentenced in 2012 to 14 years in prison for conscripting child soldiers.
A Congolese warlord known as “The Terminator” was convicted in July 2019 for atrocities committed during a brutal ethnic conflict in a mineral-rich region of Congo in 2002-2003. Bosco Ntaganda was given a 30-year prison sentence.
In 2021, the court convicted Dominic Ongwen of dozens of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including multiple killings and forced marriages in Uganda. Ongwen was a one-time child soldier who morphed into a brutal commander of a notorious rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.
What will these sanctions do?
The exact impact is unclear. Trump’s executive order invokes emergency powers from several laws to allow the US Treasury Department and the US State Department to issue specific sanctions.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is a likely target, as is anyone involved in the Netanyahu investigation, including the three judges who issued the arrest warrants. The sanctions could also target the court itself, grinding its operations to a halt.
During his previous term in office, Trump imposed sanctions on former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her deputies over her investigation of alleged crimes in Afghanistan.
The probe covered offences allegedly committed by the Taliban, American troops and US foreign intelligence operatives dating back to 2002. Trump’s sanctions blocked Bensouda from accessing any US-based financial assets of court employees and barred her and her immediate family from entering the United States.
President Joe Biden lifted the sanctions when he took office in 2021.
Why has the court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu?
In November, a pretrial panel of judges issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas’ military chief, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza.
The warrants said there was reason to believe Netanyahu and Gallant used “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting humanitarian aid, and intentionally targeted civilians in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Israeli officials deny the charges.
The warrant marked the first time that a sitting leader of a major Western power has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global court. The decision makes Netanyahu and the other internationally wanted suspects, putting them at risk of arrest when they travel abroad and potentially further isolating them.
Do these sanctions jeopardize current trials?
The court is currently without a trial ahead for the first time since it arrested its first suspect in 2006.
It has issued 33 unsealed arrest warrants. Those named range from Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin to Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony and Gamlet Guchmazov, a former government member of the breakaway region of South Ossetia in Georgia. Kony is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Guchmazov is accused of torture.
Three verdicts are pending. Former CAR football federation president Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona and Alfred Yekatom, alleged leaders of a predominantly Christian rebel group in the Central African Republic, are accused of multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The trial of Ali Mohammed Ali Abdul Rahman Ali, who is accused of committing atrocities as the leader of the Janjaweed militia in Sudan, wrapped up last year.
For a few hours last month, the court appeared poised to take a Libyan warlord into custody. Instead, member state Italy sent Ossama Anjiem home. Also known as Ossama al-Masri, Anjiem heads the Tripoli branch of the Reform and Rehabilitation Institution, a notorious network of detention centres run by the government-backed Special Defence Force.
AP
