The move was
made, all in the name of imposing sanctions on the woman for probing atrocious
human rights violations by American soldiers in Afghanistan.
In a bizzare
move, the United States today branded Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of
the International Criminal Court (ICC) a terrorist and narcotics smuggler.
Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo announced the sanctions on Wednesday.
He also put
on the list, Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the ICC’s jurisdiction division.
In line with
the sanction, the US Treasury issued a statement saying Bensouda and Mochochoko
had been deemed “specially designated nationals”, grouping them alongside
terrorists and narcotics traffickers.
The U.S. also
blocked their assets and prohibited US citizens from having any dealings with
them.
The court
said it would respond to the sanctioning of Bensouda and Mochochoko later
today.
Richard
Dicker, the international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the
announcement “marks a stunning perversion of US sanctions, devised to penalize
rights abusers and kleptocrats, to persecute those tasked with prosecuting
international crimes”.
“The Trump
administration has twisted these sanctions to obstruct justice, not only for
certain war crimes victims, but for atrocity victims anywhere looking to the
international criminal court for justice,” Dicker said.
The decision
to escalate its campaign against the ICC is one of a series of radical steps
the Trump administration has taken on foreign policy that have left it isolated
on the world stage.
This year,
the Trump administration imposed economic sanctions on ICC employees involved
in investigating U.S. troops for potential war crimes in Afghanistan.
The ICC was
established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes,
genocide and crimes against humanity in places where perpetrators might not
otherwise face justice.
The U.S. has
declined to join.
Pompeo said
that since the U.S. was not part of the ICC, the investigations were
“illegitimate.”
*With reports
by Reuters/NAN
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