WASHINGTON: Two human rights groups say Trump administration sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court over its investigations of Israel\u2019s war against Hamas in Gaza have illegally impeded their ability to advocate for Palestinians.<\/p>\n
The organizations say in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that they have been forced to censor their own advocacy work to avoid scrutiny from the White House, which in an executive order last year not only targeted the Hague-based criminal court but prohibited providing or receiving services to or from entities that have been sanctioned.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan against top administration officials by DAWN and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, seeks a court order that would strike down the restrictions on their advocacy and their ability to interact with Palestinian human rights groups and other sanctioned parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expressions of millions of Americans,\u201d said Omar Shakir, the executive director of DAWN, a US-based group advocating for democracy and human rights in the Arab world that was founded by Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The Hague-based ICC has been investigating allegations of war crimes in Gaza during the war that began after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A panel of judges issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu has called the warrants \u201cabsurd.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US and Israel are not among the court\u2019s member states, and neither nation recognizes its authority.<\/p>\n
In response to the arrest warrants, President Donald Trump, a Republican, issued an executive order last year that accused the ICC of engaging in \u201cillegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel\u201d and warned of \u201ctangible and significant consequences\u201d on those responsible for the ICC\u2019s \u201ctransgressions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US over the last year has slapped sanctions on Palestinian human rights groups, a series of ICC judges and staffers \u2014 including the court\u2019s former chief prosecutor \u2014 and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza. Her family sued in February, saying the penalties violated the First Amendment.<\/p>\n
Already, the lawsuit says, DAWN has halted work on submissions to the ICC about Israel\u2019s conduct during the war, stopped exchanging evidence and legal analysis with sanctioned non-government organizations and abstained from collaborating with them on advocacy campaigns. It has also been forced to \u201cdiscontinue its professional engagements with Albanese.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chilling effect on Plaintiffs has been profound,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cThey now face prison terms and ruinous fines if, in their interactions with the designated parties, they provide or receive anything that Defendants could plausibly characterize as a \u2018service\u2019\u2014 an extraordinarily capacious term that potentially reaches any act that confers a benefit on its recipient. Fearing liability, Plaintiffs \u2014 and countless others like them \u2014 have turned to self-censorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is among the defendants in the lawsuit, denounced the court as recently as this week, pledging in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that Trump\u2019s administration would \u201cdismantle the ICC \u2014 brick by brick, if necessary.\u201d He warned that the court\u2019s \u201coverreach,\u201d if left unchecked, could subject Border Patrol agents, federal prosecutors and US Marines to the tribunal\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ICC\u2019s interfering with American military and law enforcement operations isn\u2019t only a grave overreach of its purported authorities. It would mean the death of the US as a sovereign and independent nation,\u201d Rubio wrote. \u201cOur decision and our people would be at the mercy of the ICC and its collaborators in the \u2018international community.\u2019 To accept the ICC is to surrender control of our national destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n
The State Department said the campaign against the court could include additional sanctions or visa revocations and travel bans for ICC employees as well as \u201cincreased scrutiny\u201d of nations that don\u2019t reject ICC authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Two human rights groups say Trump administration sanctions imposed on the International Criminal Court over its investigations of Israel\u2019s war against Hamas in Gaza have illegally impeded their ability to advocate for Palestinians. The organizations say in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that they have been forced to censor their own advocacy work to avoid …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100385,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100369\/revisions\/100385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}