Human rights advocates the world over condemned the Trump administration on Wednesday for imposing sanctions on two top officials at the International Criminal Court—just the latest act of retaliation for the Hague-based ICC’s ongoing investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by U.S. forces and others in Afghanistan during the so-called War on Terror.
“The Trump administration’s perverse use of sanctions, devised for alleged terrorists and drug kingpins, against prosecutors seeking justice for grave international crimes, magnifies the failure of the U.S. to prosecute torture,” said Richard Dicker, international justice director at Human Rights Watch. “The administration’s conjuring up a ‘national emergency’ to punish war crimes prosecutors shows utter disregard for the victims.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been a lead adversary of the ICC probe, which moved forward in March after a series of delays. During a Wednesday press conference, Pompeo announced the government’s sanctions targeting Fatou Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko, the court’s chief prosecutor and prosecution jurisdiction division director, respectively. Continue reading.