Dozens of
countries speak out against Trump sanctions on ICC
Brazil,
Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Germany among many to warn of risks of undermining
international criminal court
Harry
Davies, Marina Dunbar and Oliver Holmes
Fri 7 Feb
2025 12.14 GMT
Governments
around the world have rushed to defend the international criminal court after
Donald Trump launched sanctions against the global body, which is seen as a
vital last resort to prosecute powerful individuals accused of atrocities
including war crimes and genocide.
Set up more
than two decades ago to serve as an impartial and incorruptible body that had
the heft to take on criminals – from militant warlords to heads of state – the
ICC has found itself under attack from Washington at a time when it is
investigating shocking violence in Gaza.
The US
president signed an executive order on Thursday authorising aggressive economic
sanctions against the ICC and travel bans on its staff, accusing the court of
“illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its ally Israel.
Trump’s
order cited an ICC-issued arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war
crimes relating to the Gaza war as a reason for the decision. Netanyahu visited
Washington this week and praised Trump as Israel’s “greatest friend”.
Responding
on Friday, the ICC called on its 125 state parties to stand up against
sanctions, describing Washington’s move as an attempt to “harm its independent
and impartial judicial work”.
Hours later,
79 countries – including Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Nigeria – released
a joint letter that warned sanctions would “increase the risk of impunity for
the most serious crimes and threaten to erode the international rule of law”.
Longtime US
allies have found themselves at odds with Washington, while the head of a major
global rights group called it “vindictive”.
The German
chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said sanctions would “jeopardise an institution that
is supposed to ensure that the dictators of this world cannot simply persecute
people and start wars”.
France said
it would reaffirm its support for the ICC and mobilise with its partners so
that the ICC could continue its mission. In London, a spokesperson for the UK
prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Britain supported the independence of the
court.
The European
Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the ICC gave “a voice to
victims worldwide” and it “must be able to freely pursue the fight against
global impunity”, while the main United Nations rights agency said Trump’s
decision should be reversed.
In his
order, Trump said the ICC had “abused its power” by issuing the warrants for
Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which he claimed “set a
dangerous precedent” that endangered US citizens and its military personnel.
Netanyahu strongly applauded Trump’s move, calling it bold.
The former
US president Joe Biden acted as Israel’s most prominent international defender
as it pursued a devastating war in Gaza, and called the ICC warrants issued in
November “outrageous”.
Trump, who
used the term “Palestinian” as a slur during a campaign debate, has gone
further, suggesting Gaza should be “cleaned out”.
Earlier this
week, Trump presented a proposal for a US takeover of Gaza that would require
the removal of about 2 million Palestinians to neighbouring countries, a plan
lauded by Netanyahu but widely condemned as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing.
Egypt, which
borders Gaza, intensified calls with Arab partners on Friday, including Jordan,
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to stress its rejection of any
measures aimed at displacing Palestinians, its foreign ministry said.
Trump’s
proposal has also thrown uncertainty over a fragile Gaza ceasefire deal that
was reached last month.
The ICC was
established in 2002 to prosecute serious crimes committed by individuals when
member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. While the US and
Israel are not parties to the statute, their citizens can fall under its
jurisdiction. Israel has other allies such as the UK, Germany and France who
would be obliged to arrest Netanyahu if he were to travel to those countries.
The warrants
for Netanyahu and Gallant were approved by a three-judge panel elected by state
parties, and an arrest warrant has also been issued for the Hamas military
leader Mohammed Deif, whose whereabouts are unknown. In 2021, the ICC ruled
that it had jurisdiction in Palestine and could investigate crimes there,
despite Israeli objections.
Amnesty
International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, said Trump’s order “sends
the message that Israel is above the law and the universal principles of
international justice”.
She said on
Thursday: “Today’s executive order is vindictive. It is aggressive. It is a
brutal step that seeks to undermine and destroy what the international
community has painstakingly constructed over decades, if not centuries: global
rules that are applicable to everyone and aim to deliver justice for all.”
The ICC has separately issued an arrest
warrant for the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, for overseeing the abduction
of Ukrainian children, and for Russian officials related to missile strikes on
civilian infrastructure.
Ukraine said
on Friday it hoped the ICC would continue its work on those cases. “We hope
that they will not affect the court’s ability to achieve justice for the
victims of Russian aggression,” said a foreign ministry spokesperson.
After ICC
judges issued the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in November,
the court braced itself for retaliatory moves by the incoming Trump
administration. Officials at the court, which is headquartered in The Hague,
fear the sanctions could pose an existential threat to the judicial body.
Emergency
meetings were held on Friday among senior court officials to rapidly assess the
implications of Trump’s order, which one official said had been written in such
a way that it was “broad enough to be very disruptive for the court if [the US]
wants it to be”.
Among the
issues alarming the court is a requirement in the order that within 60 days the
US Treasury submits to Trump the names of “additional persons” to be targeted
with sanctions. ICC sources said this would hang over the court and create
considerable uncertainty for its staff, operations, and access to services it
depends on to function.
They said
the order suggested the US had decided at this stage to impose sanctions
against one individual, who is listed in a separate document it has not yet
published. Three ICC sources familiar with internal discussions said the court
expected the affected individual to be its British chief prosecutor, Karim
Khan.
If Khan were
targeted, his day-to-day work at the court would be severely hampered, former
and current prosecution officials said. He would have to be effectively
ringfenced from certain cases and some of his staff. He could also be prevented
from travelling to the US.
In 2020,
under a separate but similar executive order, Trump imposed travel bans and
asset freezes on the ICC’s former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who is Gambian, as
well as one of her top officials.
The measures
were launched in response to decisions made by Bensouda in war crimes
investigations in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories. At the
time, Bensouda was conducting a preliminary inquiry into allegations of crimes
committed by Israel’s armed forces and Hamas.
In 2021,
Bensouda upgraded the case to a formal criminal investigation. Khan inherited
the inquiry and later accelerated it after the Hamas-led 7 October attacks and
Israel’s ensuing destruction of Gaza.
Israel is
fighting a separate court case in the international court of justice, which
adjudicates disputes between states, on allegations of genocide in Gaza, where
it has killed nearly 50,000 people.
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