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The United States has announced new sanctions targeting two top International Criminal Court (ICC) officials over the court’s efforts to investigate and prosecute people from countries that never accepted its jurisdiction.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: The ICC was set up in 2002 to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and it now has 125 member states. The US has never been one of them, and neither has Israel. The court can still reach non-members because the Rome Statute allows it to prosecute crimes that occur on the soil of a member state, regardless of the accused’s nationality. That is the fight in a sentence. Trump’s problem with the court dates to his first term and the ICC investigation into US conduct in Afghanistan, and it sharpened in November 2024, when the court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, finding reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for starvation as a method of warfare and for murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts in Gaza. The US has consistently maintained that the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority over Americans, a line Trump delivered to the UN General Assembly during his first term and has never walked back.
What’s going on now: In a notable development, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions targeting ICC President Tomoko Akane, a Japanese judge who has led the court since March 2024, and Abdoulaye Seye, a Senegalese lawyer on its senior trial team. Anything either of them holds in the US is now frozen, and both are locked out of the American banking system, which in practice means most international banks stop dealing with them.
“These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” Rubio said. He was blunter on social media. “The Trump Administration is sanctioning ICC President Tomoko Akane and Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye in our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court,” he wrote, adding that in honor of the Declaration of Independence, Americans will never be shipped overseas to be tried for pretend offenses.
The court pushed back, saying, “When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk,” it said, adding that it remains undeterred and will keep doing its job. Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen, whose government hosts the court, said the Netherlands disapproves and that he has invited Akane in to talk about continued support.
This comes as the US has now sanctioned over a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors, including the chief prosecutor, plus advocacy organizations and individuals who have worked alongside the court, among them UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Rubio announced a whole-of-government campaign last month to dismantle the ICC brick by brick, using visa revocations, more sanctions, travel bans, and diplomatic pressure on member states to walk away.
Recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said countries that work with US law enforcement, host American troops, or sit under the US security umbrella are being asked to reject the court’s authority over Americans, and that the US will watch with interest who complies. Venezuela’s US-backed interim government and Chad both announced withdrawals in late July.
