New York: The Donald Trump administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday, hours after one of its former judges Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
ICC’s deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan condemned the sanctions, saying it won’t halt the tribunal’s work, reported Reuters.
The decision of the United States is likely to put Washington on a diplomatic collision course with European allies.
The Trump administration has long been hostile to the ICC — which was founded in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – having imposed sanctions on its prosecutors and judges earlier also.
Friday’s move will stretch it further, by potentially punishing companies that provide services to the court itself.
“President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “That is why, today, the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”
Nobel Peace winner Pillay, a South African jurist, had served as a judge on the ICC’s Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2008.
In its citation, the Nobel Prize committee said that in naming Pillay, it had sought to “issue a reminder” at a time when “judges and institutions of international law are under political attack”.
“An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world,” the prize committee said.
Rubio said the sanctions had been structured to give the ICC and its member states an opportunity to address US concerns.
ICC counts 125 countries as member states, including all EU countries and all members of the NATO alliance apart from the United States and Turkey.