US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on Wednesday August 20 on four members of the International Criminal Court. Their wrong? They would threaten the security of the country by their investigations carried out against Israel and the United States as part of the current genocide in Gaza.
Taken from Palestine Media Agency.
Canadian judge Kimberley Prost and French judge Nicolas Guillou are two of the four magistrates of the International Criminal Court (ICC) under the breach of the sanctions announced yesterday by Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State (the equivalent of the Minister of Foreign Affairs). To their names are added those of Nazhat Shameem Khan from the Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal, two assistant CPI prosecutors.
The United States denounces a threat to its national security
“The International Criminal Court continues to flout national sovereignty and to promote legal war by trying to investigate, arrest, hold and pursue American and Israeli nationals. In response, I sanction four other CPI officials. We will continue to request accounts from the managers of morally devoid of legal basis and the ICC against the Americans It was by this tweet published yesterday afternoon that the US Secretary of State announced new sanctions with regard to these four CPI magistrates. A more detailed official press release was also published by the US State Department.
Different facts are accused by the US administration to the personnel implicated. Each time, allegations aim at business in which the United States is involved, not just the Palestinian file. This is the case of Canadian judge Kimberley Prost, sanctioned for his involvement in the CPI in progress in war crimes potentially committed by American soldiers in Afghanistan. The other judge, the Frenchman Nicolas Guillou, is the judge who chairs the preliminary room of the ICC in charge of the file on Palestine. It is this room which is at the origin of the arrest warrants issued in November 2024 by the CPI for crimes against humanity against the head of the Israeli government Benjamin Netanyahu and his Minister of Defense of the time, Yoav Gallant.
The two prosecutors are implicated since they are responsible for their status to pursue and investigate people suspected of crimes against humanity or war crimes, here American and Israeli citizens. The United States denounces the excessive “politicization” of the ICC and its interference in the internal affairs of the two countries while neither the United States nor Israel is members.
International reactions
Faced with these sanctions, the reactions of the ICC in the first place were not long in falling, the international judicial body qualifying these sanctions “of flagrant attack against a impartial judicial institution”. Several Western countries, however, not very inclined to firm with the United States and Israel have condemned this decision, like France which expressed “its dismay” and its “solidarity with regard to the magistrates referred to by this decision” through the voice of a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The ICC does not allow itself to be intimidated. The latter said that she would continue to “pay her mandates, without being discouraged, in strict compliance with her legal framework as adopted by the States Parties and without taking into account the slightest restriction, pressure or threat”.
For its part, the Israeli genocidal state logically supported the sanctions pronounced by the US Secretary of State. As the leader of a long -standing ally country of the Americans, Benjamin Netanyahu praised “a firm measure against the false defamation campaign with regard to the State of Israel and his army, and for truth and justice”.
A systematic policy of undermining international bodies
These sanctions announced yesterday by the United States are not new. Rather, they are part of the continuity of an American foreign policy which aims to undermine international authorities. This is already the third time since the beginning of the year that the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio aims at members of the ICC.
Already last February, measures were taken against the prosecutor of the ICC Karim Khan. He is the magistrate who had requested the arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu a year ago, finally issued last November. Same thing for the sanctions announced in June against four other members of the ICC. The targeted magistrates were certainly different, but the four of them were also also involved either in the file of American war crimes in Afghanistan, or in the program of arrest mandates against Israeli political leaders Netanyahu and Gallant.
Last similar case dated last July, where the United Nations special rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese was this time in the viewfinder of Marco Rubio. She had undergone similar sanctions for her support for the procedures in progress at the ICC and her denunciation of the genocide in Gaza.
