The United States on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) imposed sanctions against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane of Japan and another senior official as part of its campaign against the body that it accuses of being “politicized.”
Washington also slapped sanctions on ICC Senior Trial Lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal in the Trump administration’s latest salvo against The Hague-based court. The United States, which is not a party to the international treaty that established the ICC, has already imposed sanctions against several of the court’s officials. “The Trump Administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.
“These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, without providing examples. “When judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk,” the court said in a statement. The Netherlands, where the ICC is based in The Hague, “disapproves of the latest sanctions against officials and staff of the ICC,” Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen wrote in an X post. We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty,” Rubio’s statement said. The sanctions are “just the latest example of the Trump administration’s utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice,” HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director Balkees Jarrah said in a statement.
