The International Criminal Court (ICC) is afraid that it could be “destroyed” by American sanctions imposed by the new Trump Administration, ICC officials told the Guardian.
The officials stated that US sanctions could “shut the court down entirely.”
“The concern is the sanctions will be used to shut the court down, to destroy it rather than just tie its hands,” one of the officials said.
Republicans in the House and Senate have vowed to impose sanctions on the ICC in response to the organization’s decision to approve Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Members of the Trump Administration have also called for sanctions on the ICC.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned during his Senate confirmation hearing last week that if the ICC is allowed to target Israeli leaders, America could find itself the ICC’s next target.
“I think the ICC has done tremendous damage to its global credibility. First of all, it is going after a non-member state” Rubio responded. He criticized ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s claims that the ICC has the right to go after non-member states.
“I think … that the whole premise of his prosecution is flawed,” Rubio said, “beyond the process of it and the precedent that it sets, which is a very dangerous precedent for the United States of America, by the way, because this is a test run. This is a trial run to see, ‘Can we go after a head of state from a nation that’s not a member?’ If we can go after them and we can get it done with regards to Israel, they will apply that to the United States at some point. And in fact, there have been threats to do so in the past.”
“There is a difference between those who in the conduct of armed action deliberately target civilians and those who do as much as they can to avoid civilians being caught up [while fighting] against an enemy that doesn’t wear a uniform, against an enemy that hides in tunnels, against an enemy that hides behind women and children and puts them at the forefront and uses them as human shields. That;s who Hamas is. There is no moral equivalency, and I think the ICC, if they don’t drop this, will find its credibility globally badly damaged. And I believe the United States should be very concerned, because I believe this is a test run to applying it to American service members and American leaders in the future,” Rubio said.
Today (Thursday), Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar stated, “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost all of its moral authority after it trampled the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”