US government says it wants to ‘systematically disable’ The Hague-based international criminal court
A spokesperson for the EU has pushed back against the Trump administration’s assertion that the international criminal court poses a threat to US sovereignty, a day after the US government said it would work to “systematically disable” a global tribunal that seeks to prosecute some of the world’s gravest crimes.
“We stand firm in our support for the international criminal court (ICC),” an EU spokesperson, Anouar El Anouni, said on Tuesday. “Attacks or threats against the court-elected officials, personnel or those cooperating with the court are simply not acceptable.”
El Anouni pointed to the court’s role in pursuing the perpetrators of some of the world’s gravest crimes, from genocide to war crimes. “And let’s also recall that the ICC does not target sovereign states, nor does it constitute a threat to their sovereignty,” he said.
Instead, he added, it “exercises jurisdiction over individuals, perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community”.
Since Donald Trump returned to power last year, his administration has steadily worked to hobble The Hague-based court. So far, 11 of the court’s officials – including the chief prosecutor and eight judges – have been placed under US sanctions, leaving them grappling with cancelled credit cards, Amazon and Google accounts as well as US travel bans.
Monday’s announcement, however, marked a dramatic escalation. In a video published on Monday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, claimed that the court “threatens every aspect of our political and legal system”, while in an accompanying op-ed he invoked images of US border patrol agents and elected leaders being “dragged before an international court” and tried by judges from around the world.
The US state department said in a statement that the campaign against the court would take a “wide range of actions”, including potentially pressuring other nations to withdraw from the ICC and “increased scrutiny” of the countries that refuse to do so while relying on US assistance.
Countries that could be affected by these measures include Ukraine, where the ICC launched an investigation in 2022 into possible war crimes following Russia’s invasion.
Legal experts described Rubio’s remarks as a mischaracterisation of the tribunal’s powers.
The court can only investigate crimes committed in states that are party to the Rome statute, the 1998 treaty that gave rise to the court. Even so, it asserts jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities itself. The US is not a signatory to the Rome statute.
For US citizens abroad, chances are slim of being put on trial by the court, as about 100 countries have signed agreements with the US to refrain from surrendering Americans to the court.
“The ICC is not claiming jurisdiction over conduct in the United States,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Rubio is dressing up his quest for impunity for American war crimes under the label of national sovereignty, which ignores the sovereign right of other nations to invoke the ICC for crimes committed on their territory.”
A former senior US government sanctions official suggested that the Trump administration was looking to curtail the possibility of investigations into its actions. “It gives you the sense that this is a pre-emptive campaign against any action the ICC might be considering vis-a-vis Venezuela or elsewhere abroad,” the official said.
This sense was reinforced by Rubio, who, in his op-ed, cited calls from activists and others for the court to prosecute the Trump administration for actions such as the deportation of migrants or US strikes on boats that officials have claimed are carrying narcotics.
Roth went further, citing concerns that the Trump administration could also be looking to ward off scrutiny for future actions. “Trump wants to be able to commit war crimes on the territory of countries that have accepted the court’s jurisdiction – that’s what this is about,” he said.
