Washington, Aug 18 (EFE).- The United States sanctioned the President of the International Criminal Court, Tomoko Akane, on Tuesday, in a further escalation of United States President Donald Trump’s administration against the Hague-based tribunal.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced in a statement that it is imposing sanctions on Akane and Abdoulaye Seye, a Senegalese lawyer with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor.
As president of the ICC, Akane primarily performs institutional and representative functions for the court. Seye appears to have overseen investigations into the financing of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the supply of weapons to settlers.
»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,» US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
“The Trump Administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate. We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty,» Rubio’s statement added.
The OFAC said it will allow limited transactions involving accounts associated with both individuals to settle pending transactions through Sep. 17, as the sanctions bar them from entering the US and from transactions in the US financial system.
Tuesday’s announcement is in line with what Rubio previewed in July, when he promised to step up the campaign to dismantle the court in the coming weeks.
The ICC, established in 2002, prosecutes individuals accused of the gravest atrocities and acts as a last resort when countries do not have adequate legal systems to ensure accountability.
The US, which is not a party to the international treaty that established the ICC, has already imposed sanctions against several of the court’s officials.
Trump openly declared war on the court upon returning to power in 2025, and in February he signed an executive order designating various ICC initiatives as a “threat” to national security.
Specifically, the order targets the ICC’s investigations into the US military in Afghanistan and other countries, as well as the arrest warrants the court issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
To date, the Trump administration has invoked this order to sanction ICC prosecutors and judges, as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine, Francesca Albanese, and three Palestinian human rights organizations.
The US does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction to try its citizens, as it has never signed the Rome Statute, and the Trump administration applies the same reasoning to Israel and its citizens, as Israel is also not a signatory. EFE
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