The «Legal Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine» expressed its strong condemnation of the decision of the United States of America to impose sanctions on four judges of the International Criminal Court: Nazhat Shameem Khan from Fiji, and Mame Mandiaye Niang from Senegal, who have been entrusted with following up the work of the Office of the Prosecutor currently on temporary leave, in addition to judges Kimberly Prost from Canada and Nicolas Guillou from France. This decision came less than two and a half months after sanctions were imposed on four other judges, raising the number of ICC judges sanctioned by the U.S. to half of the Court (9 out of 18 judges).
The Department stated that the U.S. sanctions came less than a week after media leaks suggested that the Deputy Prosecutors were preparing to issue arrest warrants against two Israeli ministers (Ben Gvir and Smotrich), which confirms the solid fact that the war waged by the United States and Israel is not only against the Palestinian people, but has become a war against the world—against its judicial, legal, political, and humanitarian system, and against anyone who dares to stand in the way of this aggressive duo, which seeks to entrench the law of the jungle as the basis for managing international relations.
The Department considered that the justification given by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for imposing the sanctions is contrary to the Rome Statute of the Court, especially Articles (17) and (19), which deal with the Court’s jurisdiction. The rulings and decisions of the ICC do not require the approval of Israel or the United States (as Rubio claimed) in order to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I clarified this matter in its decision of 21 November 2024, when it rejected Israel’s challenge to the Court’s jurisdiction and confirmed that the Court can exercise jurisdiction on the basis of Palestine’s territorial jurisdiction, regardless of Israel’s consent.
The «Legal Department of the Democratic Front» affirmed that the United States resorted to sanctions, security threats, and fabricating accusations against the Court’s judges after it failed to pressure them into backing down from issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir, and after the Court—represented by the Deputy Prosecutors and judges—rejected Israel’s request to revoke the arrest warrants, declare them null and void, and suspend the ongoing investigation into the situation in Palestine.
The «Legal Department of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,» while saluting the ICC judges and their courage in condemning and prosecuting Israeli war criminals and their supporters, and in continuing along the path of justice and law, stresses that criminals must not be allowed to impose the logic of impunity. The ICC judges are therefore the voice of peoples, speaking on behalf of humanity, justice, and international law. The responsibility of the States Parties to the Rome Statute now lies in making judges feel that they are not alone, and that the peoples and states of the world stand with the Court in carrying out its mission freely and without any pressure.
We call on the Netherlands, in particular, to assume its responsibilities in providing protection to the judges, in accordance with the recent document issued by the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, which stated that the Netherlands, as the host country for many international legal institutions, including the International Criminal Court, bears a special responsibility to safeguard the independence of the Court from any external influence, in light of these threats that constitute external pressure on international justice.