{"id":597669,"date":"2026-08-19T03:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T03:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597669\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T03:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T03:08:13","slug":"us-sanctions-international-criminal-court-president-and-israel-prosecutor-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597669\/","title":{"rendered":"US sanctions International Criminal Court president and Israel prosecutor \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States<\/a> has sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court<\/a> (ICC) and a prosecutor tasked with investigating crimes committed by Israel<\/a> during its war on Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new sanctions designations were unveiled by Marco Rubio<\/a>, the US secretary of state, who called The Hague-based ICC a \u201ccorrupt and fatally politicised supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate\u201d, in a statement.<\/p>\n

Rubio announced that the US would sanction Tomoko Akane of Japan, the ICC president, and Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, an ICC senior trial lawyer, because they had \u201cdirectly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

The state department last month unveiled an effort to \u201cdismantle the threat\u201d posed by the ICC to US sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The ultimate goal was to \u201cdisable the ICC\u2019s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty\u201d, the department said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Rubio has called on the 125 member countries of the ICC to withdraw from the body. US president Donald Trump has said he was targeting the ICC because of the threat it posed to Israel.<\/p>\n

The US had previously sanctioned Karim Khan, an ICC prosecutor, who had successfully sought arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu<\/a>, and for former minister for defence Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes during the Gaza war. <\/p>\n

Trump in 2025 sanctioned the court, stating in an executive order that it had \u201cengaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rubio did not say specifically which efforts the two ICC officials had engaged in, but Israeli media outlets have reported that Seye is also overseeing the investigation into Israeli funding for illegal settlements and the distribution of weapons to settlers in the West Bank<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials warned local media in May that the ICC may seek five more arrest warrants for ministers and senior military officials involved in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The US has already designated at least 11 ICC officials for sanctions, stemming from cases that also include investigations into the actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Neither the US nor Israel are member states of the ICC or recognise its jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Four human rights groups sued Trump last week for targeting the ICC. In the lawsuit they said the sanctions prevented victims of war crimes from seeking justice. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States has sanctioned the president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a prosecutor tasked with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10748,969,3409,42,45314,3410,150432,20878,43,40,38,41,39,115,27129],"class_list":["post-597669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-binyamin-netanyahu","tag-donald-trump","tag-gaza-strip","tag-headlines","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-israel","tag-israel-iran-conflict","tag-marco-rubio","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}