The US government under President Donald Trump has announced sanctions against Tomoko Akane, president of the International Criminal Court, and Abdoulaye Seye, a senior prosecutor at the court, freezing their assets in the United States and cutting both individuals off from the US financial system. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the measures were taken under a Trump executive order issued last year, because the two individuals were directly involved in ICC efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials of governments that have not consented to the court's jurisdiction. Seye is a senior prosecutor on the team that sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has also been nominated to run for election as an ICC judge. The ICC issued a statement condemning the latest US measures, saying that threatening those carrying out the work of the justice system simply for doing their duty to enforce the law poses a risk to the international rules-based order as a whole. The Netherlands, the host country of the ICC, expressed disagreement with the measures and stressed that the court and international judicial bodies must be able to carry out their work independently. The US Treasury Department issued a general license allowing transactions involving Akane and Seye to be wound down gradually until September 17. The latest measures build on sanctions imposed on several ICC officials last year, including prosecutors and judges, after the US government cited the ICC's arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as past investigations involving US troops in Afghanistan.
