Humeyra Pamuk & Stephanie van den Berg
Reuters / December 18, 2025
In November 2024, ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister.
WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE – President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on two more judges from the International Criminal Court over their involvement in the court’s case against Israel, ratcheting up Washington’s pressure campaign against the war tribunal.
In November 2024, ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister
The Trump administration has already imposed sanctions on nine ICC judges and prosecutors and threatened to designate the court in its entirety – a move that would be detrimental to its operations – if the ICC did not drop its charges against the Israeli leaders.
Washington’s other demands on the court are that it formally end an earlier probe of U.S. troops over their actions in Afghanistan and change its founding statute to ensure that it would not pursue a prosecution of Trump and his top officials, a Trump administration official told Reuters last week.
“The ICC has continued to engage in politicized actions targeting Israel, which set a dangerous precedent for all nations. We will not tolerate ICC abuses of power that violate the sovereignty of the United States and Israel and wrongly subject U.S. and Israeli persons to the ICC’s jurisdiction,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Rubio said the United States was designating ICC judge Gocha Lordkipanidze from Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin from Mongolia and said they had “directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”
Earlier this year the U.S. administration sanctioned six other judges and the court’s prosecutor Karim Khan and his two deputies.
The measures mean the judges cannot travel to the United States or hold any assets there but they also make it virtually impossible for them to hold credit cards, making everyday financial transactions and online purchases difficult.
‘FLAGRANT ATTACK’
Rubio referred to the magistrates’ involvement in voting to reject one of several Israeli legal challenges against the ICC probe into its conduct of the Gaza war earlier this week.
The judges named were part of a panel that refused to overturn a lower court decision that the prosecution’s investigation into alleged crimes under its jurisdiction could include events following the attack on Israel by militant Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023.
The ICC said it deplored the new round of sanctions, which is the fourth round of measures this year.
“These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution,” it said in a statement, adding that the measures put the international legal order at risk.
The United States and Israel are not members of the ICC, but the Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015.
The ICC is the world’s permanent war crimes tribunal with 125 member states, including the entire EU but excluding major powers China, Russia and the United States, among others.
The court’s mandate allows it to prosecute individuals for alleged crimes committed by them or nationals under their command on the territory of a member state, including sitting heads of state.
Th Netherlands, which hosts the ICC in The Hague, also condemned the sanctions and said international courts should be able to work without interference.
“International courts and tribunals must be able to carry out their mandates unhindered,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on social media platform X.
Humeyra Pamuk is a senior foreign policy correspondent based in Washington DC. She covers the U.S. State Department, regularly traveling with U.S. Secretary of State
Stephanie van den Berg, based in The Hague, Stephanie reports on international justice, war crimes, criminal tribunals and Dutch news; she has covered the international courts and tribunals seated in The Hague for over twenty-five years
Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Stephanie Van den Berg and Bhargav Acharya; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Hugh Lawson and Andrea Ricci
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US imposes sanctions on two more ICC judges for Israel probe
TNA Staff
The New Arab / December 18, 2025
The US is sanctioning two judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “targeting Israel,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday.
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two more judges of the International Criminal Court after they rejected an attempt by Israel to end a war crimes probe in Gaza.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had already ordered sanctions on judges and prosecutors in the case, explicitly linked the new measures to a vote Monday in which the two judges sided with the majority and upheld arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
“We will not tolerate ICC abuses of power that violate the sovereignty of the United States and Israel and wrongly subject US and Israeli persons to the ICC’s jurisdiction,” Rubio said in a statement.
“We will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to the ICC’s lawfare and overreach,” he wrote.
It brings the number of ICC judges sanctioned by the Trump administration to at least eight, along with at least three prosecutors including chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
The Hague-based ICC responded that it “strongly rejects” the fresh sanctions.
The measures are “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution,” the ICC said in a statement.
Israel praised the US move. “Thank you, Secretary Rubio, for this moral clear stance,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on X.
The judges newly slapped with sanctions were Gocha Lordkipanidze, formerly Georgia’s justice minister, and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia.
The sanctions ban the judges from entering the United States and block property or financial transactions with them in the world’s largest economy.
Lordkipanidze was formerly an adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York.
Monday’s 44-page ruling upheld the decision to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.
Netanyahu and Gallant both face accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the relentless Israeli offensive in the Palestinian territory.
The latest action puts the United States in league with Russia, which last week sentenced ICC judges and prosecutor Khan in absentia.
The ICC had also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladmir Putin related to the invasion of Ukraine.
The United States, Israel and Russia are among the countries that reject the ICC, which is backed by nearly all Western democracies.
The ICC was set up in 2002 as a court of last resort when countries do not have adequate legal systems to ensure accountability.
During Trump’s first term, the United States also took action against the top ICC prosecutor in a successful attempt to block an investigation into alleged abuses during the US-led war in Afghanistan.
Former president Joe Biden’s administration lifted the sanctions and sought limited cooperation with the court, especially over Ukraine.
