Trump escalates war on International Criminal Court with deep sanctions

Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Meatball Parade

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jack de Nijs for Anefo · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against the International Criminal Court itself, expanding on earlier penalties against nine of its 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor and a staffer. The move threatens to cut off banking and software services the tribunal needs to pay staff and pursue cases, including the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rubio called the court 'rogue' and 'fake' and said the United States and its people are not subject to its jurisdiction; the ICC's president, Tomoko Akane, said the court would continue operating with independence. Five nations have withdrawn from the court under U.S. pressure over the past year, and sanctioned officials report blocked banking and disrupted family finances.

The sanctions do not cancel pending cases or revoke warrants, which remain in effect, but they can starve the court of the resources needed to bring them to trial. Dutch officials have reportedly been searching for workarounds, including replacing Microsoft products and shifting insurance providers away from U.S. companies.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You can call a court fake all you want, that doesn't make its warrants disappear, it just makes the lights harder to keep on. Washington has been chipping away at this thing with judge-by-judge sanctions for a while now, and this is just taking a sledgehammer to the whole building instead. Funny how the nations most eager to declare themselves above the law are always the ones who never joined it in the first place.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Meatball Parade · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0