Marco Rubio launches campaign to dismantle international criminal court | Marco Rubio
US secretary of state Marco Rubio launched a campaign on Monday to disband the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming the global court interferes with US military and law enforcement operations at the risk of American sovereignty.
Rubio referenced footage of U.S. Border Patrol agents and elected leaders being “dragged before an international tribunal” and tried by judges from around the world. long comment It was published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
“If we stand idly by,” Rubio warned a friend, “they will all be at the mercy of foreign judges thousands of miles away, at constant risk of prosecution and even imprisonment for the so-called ‘crime’ of defending their own country.” Video sent to X.
The State Department’s plan to “disband” the ICC would include pressuring other countries to leave the court. based on to CNN. “Nations that refuse to reject the ICC’s bogus mandate by relying on U.S. assistance are likely to be subject to increased scrutiny,” an official told the press, adding that possible penalties could include sanctions, travel bans and visa cancellations.
But three international law experts called Rubio’s remarks a mischaracterization of the court’s powers.
“The ICC does not claim jurisdiction over conduct in the United States,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Rubio dresses up his quest for impunity for American war crimes under the label of national sovereignty, which ignores the sovereign right of other nations to appeal to the ICC for crimes committed on their own soil.”
The international court, headquartered in The Hague, can only investigate crimes committed in states that are parties to the convention. Rome StatuteThe 2002 agreement establishing the ICC. The United States did not ratify the treaty, and the court did not launch an investigation into crimes committed on American soil.
“Trump wants to be able to commit war crimes on the soil of countries that accept the court’s jurisdiction — that’s what this is about,” Roth said.
The Trump administration has at times celebrated the concept of ICC jurisdiction and welcomed an investigation into Russian war crimes in Ukraine, a signatory of the Rome Statute.
The ICC Prosecutor’s Office, led by Karim Khan, launched an investigation into Israel’s behavior in consenting to its investigations in Palestine. There is a court issued an arrest warrant On behalf of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant in connection with the war crimes investigation.
Six weeks into his second term, Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring a “national emergency” based on what he called the ICC’s “illegitimate and unfounded actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and imposed a series of sanctions on court officials, including attorney general Karim Khan, as well as two of his deputies and six justices, for their investigations into Israel’s conduct in Palestine and the activities of US troops in Afghanistan.
The Trump administration’s sanctions regime has been expanded through 2025 by imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Three Palestinian human rights groups Those involved in gathering evidence of possible Israeli war crimes.
It’s unclear exactly how Rubio’s latest pledge to “disband” the ICC will affect the court’s operations moving forward.
“We will probably start hearing from our foreign counterparts who are under pressure to take action against the ICC,” said a former senior U.S. sanctions official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss politically sensitive issues. “When sanctions work, you use sanctions to reinforce what you have achieved through diplomacy.”
The former official said there are rumors that the Trump administration may sanction the court as a whole. “That gives you the sense that this is a pre-emptive campaign against any action the ICC might consider against Venezuela or anywhere else abroad.”
If this action were taken, Americans would not be allowed to work with the ICC, and American personnel, companies, or banks would risk financial penalties or imprisonment for doing business with the court.
“Rubio’s attack not only underscores US hypocrisy, it undermines access to justice around the world, from Ukraine to Sudan, and could amount to obstruction of justice, a crime under the Rome Statute,” said Raed Jarrar, Dawn’s director of advocacy. he said in a statement Monday. “It is not the ICC that Rubio is dismantling brick by brick, but the rules-based international order that emerged from the ashes of the second world war.”
