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Status: 04/02/2021 10:53 pm
The United States has withdrawn the sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court under former President Trump. Chancellor Blinken called the previous administration’s approach “inappropriate and ineffective.”
The US government of President Joe Biden has lifted visa restrictions and sanctions against employees of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in Washington that Biden had reversed an order made by his predecessor, Donald Trump. This also lifted the punitive measures imposed by the Trump administration against the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and the head of the ICC department, Phakiso Mochochoko. Visa restrictions for employees of the Court of Justice have also been removed.
Trump passed an order last June that, among other things, could freeze any property belonging to court employees in the United States. Bensouda and Mochochoko were included on the US sanctions list in early September. The US State Department, headed by then-department head Mike Pompeo, also restricted the issuance of visas for certain criminal court employees. Pompeo called the court “a broken and corrupt institution” that continues to repress Americans.
Intermittent: “inappropriate and ineffective” measures
Blinken described the previous government’s procedure as “inadequate and ineffective.” He stressed that the United States did not agree in any way with the actions of the Court against the United States in relation to Afghanistan. However, the Biden administration felt that it was better to raise these concerns by communicating with all stakeholders than by imposing sanctions.
In March 2020, the International Criminal Court in The Hague paved the way for investigations of possible war crimes in Afghanistan, including against US soldiers and employees of the US secret service CIA. The court prosecutes war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. 123 states have ratified the court’s basic treaty, the so-called Roman statutes. The United States is not a State party to the Court of Justice and has been strictly opposed to it for years.
