US Sanctions ICC President and Prosecutor, Bringing Total Targeted Officials to at Least 11

Marco Rubio announced Tuesday that the United States is sanctioning International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane of Japan and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal. The sanctions follow a campaign the secretary of state says is designed to "systematically dismantle" the court "brick by brick, if necessary," according to al-Monitor.

Rubio didn't mince words. He called the ICC "a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate," per his statement carried by multiple outlets including The Guardian and Channel News Asia. The sanctions block Akane and Seye from entering the US and cut them off from the American financial system.

The stated justification: both officials "directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction," Rubio said. Neither the US nor Israel signed the Rome Statute that created the ICC in 2002, and neither recognizes the court's authority over their citizens or allies.

A Widening Net

This isn't an isolated action. Rubio previously sanctioned ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who sought and won arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the Gaza war. Khan was removed from his post last month amid sexual misconduct allegations, according to al-Monitor.

Rubio has also sanctioned four ICC judges — Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler of Slovenia — for the same reason, according to Breitbart. The Guardian reports the US has already designated at least 11 ICC officials for sanctions, stemming from cases that also include investigations into the actions of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Israeli media, cited by The Guardian, report that Seye is also overseeing a separate ICC probe into Israeli funding of West Bank settlements and weapons distribution to settlers. Israeli officials warned local media in May that the court could seek five more arrest warrants tied to violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. This expansion of scope goes beyond the original Netanyahu-Gallant warrants that triggered the initial dispute.

The 2024 Arrest Warrants

The whole confrontation traces back to November 2024, when a three-judge ICC panel found "reasonable grounds" that Netanyahu and Gallant bore responsibility for war crimes in Gaza, including "starvation as a method of warfare" and "the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts," according to al-Monitor. Those are allegations from an ICC panel — not a conviction, and not a claim the US or Israel accepts as legitimate given neither country is a member state.

President Biden had lifted Trump's first-term ICC sanctions but then objected to the Netanyahu warrant himself, according to Breitbart. Trump restored and expanded sanctions in February 2025, calling the court's actions a "dangerous precedent" threatening US servicemembers, per his executive order.

The Legal Pushback

Four human rights groups — Human Rights Watch, the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Open Society Institute — sued the Trump administration on August 11 in the Southern District of New York, according to the Epoch Times. The complaint also challenges sanctions on a UN human rights expert and three Palestinian groups.

HRW's international justice director, Liz Evenson, said at an August 11 press conference: "The Trump administration seeks a get-out-of-jail-free card for whomever it chooses. And with this case, we say no," per the Epoch Times. The complaint calls the sanctions "an unlawful abuse of power constituting a frontal attack on the rule of law."

The opposing argument rests on this: victims of alleged war crimes in Gaza, Afghanistan, or elsewhere may have fewer avenues to pursue accountability if the court investigating those crimes can't function normally, and if lawyers and judges working those cases face personal sanctions for doing their jobs. Lead counsel Andrew Loewenstein of Foley Hoag LLP said the sanctions "transgress the president's authority and violate international and US law, including the rights to freedom of expression and religion."

A Trump administration official told the Epoch Times the government doesn't comment on pending litigation, but added: "activist groups seeking to enable further ICC overreach are proving Secretary Rubio's point." No court has ruled on the merits of the lawsuit yet.

What's Actually Contested

The legal question is whether a non-member state's citizens or allies fall under ICC jurisdiction without that state's consent. The US and Israel say no. The ICC and its member states — 125 of them, according to The Guardian — say the court can act when a state where alleged crimes occurred is itself unable or unwilling to prosecute, regardless of whether the accused's home government signed on.

Rubio wants more countries to defund and quit the court entirely. Venezuela and Chad have already announced withdrawals, according to Local News 8's report via CNN. Whether other US allies — many of which are ICC member states and host American troops — follow that lead is the next thing to watch. So is the HRW lawsuit, which remains unresolved in the Southern District of New York.