'Your whole world is restricted,' says one sanctioned judge

ICC officials confront curbs to travel, finances in face of sweeping US sanctions

Sanctioned staff lose access to credit cards, emails, travel visas and Amazon’s Alexa over court’s warrants for PM, Gallant, and US officials; Canadian judge says officials ‘undeterred’

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are struggling to live and work under far-reaching, unpredictable financial and travel restrictions imposed by the United States earlier this year.

Nine staff members, including six judges and the ICC’s chief prosecutor, have been sanctioned by US President Donald Trump for pursuing investigations into officials from the US and Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two countries aren’t among the 125 member states of the court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Typically reserved for autocrats, crime bosses and the like, the sanctions prevent the ICC officials and their families from entering the US, block their access to basic financial services and extend to the minutiae of their everyday lives.

Among the others who have been hit with the sanctions are Russian President Vladimir Putin and, before his death, Osama bin Laden.

The court’s top prosecutor, British national Karim Khan, had his bank accounts closed and his US visa revoked, while Microsoft canceled his ICC email address.

Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, who was named in the latest round of sanctions in August, immediately lost access to her credit cards. Amazon’s Alexa stopped responding to her.

“Your whole world is restricted,” Prost told The Associated Press last week.

Prost had an inkling of what would happen when she made the list. Before joining the ICC in 2017, she worked on sanctions for the UN Security Council.

She was targeted by the Trump administration for voting to allow the court’s investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan, including by American troops and intelligence operatives.

“I’ve worked all my life in criminal justice, and now I’m on a list with those implicated in terrorism and organized crime,” she said.

Sanctions over ‘illegitimate’ legal action against US, Israel

The Trump administration sanctioned the court after a panel of ICC judges in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over Israel’s two-year war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

Judges found there was reason to believe that the pair may have committed war crimes by restricting humanitarian aid and intentionally targeting civilians during the war — charges Israeli officials deny. Netanyahu’s office called the accusations “antisemitic” and said it rejected them “with disgust.”

Israel says it goes to great lengths to avoid harming civilians as it targets Hamas and other terror groups that have built a warren of fortified tunnels under Gaza and routinely use civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals as command centers and to carry out attacks.

The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three top leaders from Hamas for organizing the October 7, 2023, attack that started the Gaza war. But they were dropped after the terror group leaders were killed by Israel.

The court is also facing a leadership crisis as, earlier this year, Khan stepped aside pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct. He denies the allegations.

The Foreign Ministry filed an appeal last month against Khan’s involvement in the ongoing cases, which also urged the repeal of the warrants, citing the misconduct allegations. It said that the prosecutor “acted out of illegitimate personal motives to advance false and baseless claims against Israel.”

When explaining Trump’s executive order sanctioning the ICC in February, the White House said the move was in response to the “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”

“The United States will not tolerate efforts to violate our sovereignty or to wrongfully subject US or Israeli persons to the ICC’s unjust jurisdiction,” Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in response to questions from the AP.

How the sanctions work

The sanctions have taken their toll on the court’s work across a broad array of investigations, as it also grapples with the investigation of Khan. And how companies comply with the sanctions can be unpredictable.

Businesses and individuals risk substantial US fines and prison time if they provide sanctioned people with “financial, material, or technological support,” forcing many to stop working with them.

Shortly after she was listed, Prost bought an e-book, “The Queen’s Necklace” by Antál Szerb, only to later find it had disappeared from her device.

“It’s the uncertainty,” she said. “They are small annoyances, but they accumulate.”

There is little the staff can do to get the sanctions lifted. Sanctions imposed during the first Trump administration against the previous prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, weren’t removed until Joe Biden became president in 2021.

Ibáñez, a former prosecutor in Peru, vowed that the sanctions wouldn’t have any impact on her judicial activities in The Hague. “In my country, I prosecuted terrorists and drug lords. I will continue my work,” she said.

Prost, too, is defiant, saying the sanctioned staff “are absolutely undeterred and unfettered.”

Staff worry about their families

Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, a sanctioned Peruvian judge who was involved in the same Afghanistan decision as Prost, told the AP that the problems are “not only for me, but also for my daughters,” who can no longer attend work conferences in the US.

Deputy prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan echoed her colleagues’ concerns, saying, “You’re never quite sure when your card is not working somewhere, whether this is just a glitch or whether this is the sanction.”

Meanwhile, the staffers — some of whom also face arrest warrants in Russia — are worried that Washington might sanction the entire ICC, rendering it unable to pay employees, provide financial assistance to protected witnesses or even keep the lights on.

The ICC was established in 2002 as the world’s permanent court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the most heinous atrocities — war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

The court has no police force and relies on member states to execute arrest warrants, making it very unlikely that any US or Israeli official would end up in the dock.

But those wanted by the court, like Putin, can risk arrest when traveling abroad or after leaving office. More than a dozen countries have said they would comply with the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, while others, such as the United States, have rejected it.

The ICC took custody this year of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who is accused of crimes against humanity for his deadly anti-drugs crackdowns.