Washington (EFE).- The United States imposed sanctions on two International Criminal Court judges on Thursday for allegedly investigating, arresting, or prosecuting Israeli citizens without Israel’s consent, as well as for voting in favor of the court’s Dec. 15 decision against Israel’s appeal.
“The ICC has continued to engage in politicized actions targeting Israel, which set a dangerous precedent for all nations. We will not tolerate ICC abuses of power that violate the sovereignty of the US and Israel and wrongly subject US and Israeli persons to the ICC’s jurisdiction,” announced Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement.
The sanctioned judges are Gocha Lordkipanidze, from Georgia, and Erdenebalsuren Damdin, from Mongolia.
As of Monday, the ICC closed one of the main legal avenues opened by Israel to stop or delay the investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Palestine by rejecting its last appeal, and confirmed its jurisdiction over events that occurred after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
In a lengthy, technical ruling, the Appeals Chamber judges concluded that the investigation, initiated in 2021 following a 2018 request from the Palestinian Authority, already encompasses the alleged crimes committed before and after Oct. 7, as well as the subsequent Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The statement published Thursday from Washington recalled that “the US and Israel are not party to the Rome Statute and therefore reject the ICC’s jurisdiction” and ensured that they will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to the “lawfare and overreach” of the ICC.
The decision comes at a particularly sensitive time, as the court has active arrest warrants out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Previous sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on three prosecutors and six judges for the ICC’s investigation of Israel’s alleged crimes in Palestine have already had a significant impact on the lives of those affected. EFE
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