The Biden government is facing mounting criticism for failing to lift sanctions imposed by the United States last year on war crimes prosecutors in the international criminal court, while Israel lobbying to keep the punitive measures in place.
The sanctions, aimed at officials of ICC prosecutors and their families, were imposed by the Trump administration in September in retaliation for initiating investigations into the Afghan and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
Days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, the state department said that while the new government did not agree with the decision to initiate these investigations, “the sanctions will be completely revised as we determine our next steps.”
More than a month later, there was no move to lift sanctions, and a state department spokesman said this week that they had no further comment. The failure to act has caused discomfort among US allies in Europe and elsewhere, who are staunch supporters of the ICC.
According to Axios reports confirmed by the Guardian, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured Biden on February 17, in his first call since the new president took office, to maintain the sanctions in place. An official familiar with the conversation confirmed the news.
In December, the ICC prosecutor stated that there were reasons to open an investigation in the West Bank and Gaza, and a panel of judges earlier this month agreed that the prosecutor had jurisdiction.
Like the United States, Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Treaty establishing the ICC, but Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority are.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration not only sanctioned ICC officials involved in the investigation of alleged war crimes by the U.S. and its allies, but also imposed visa restrictions on the families of those officials. He also claimed that he would launch a counter-investigation to the ICC for alleged corruption, although it is not clear whether such an investigation was ever initiated.
The justice department did not respond to an inquiry into the progress of the investigation.
Legal sources said the continuing threat of sanctions had the effect of seriously hampering investigations into atrocities by all sides in Afghanistan, the West Bank and Gaza, because lawyers and institutions have been reluctant to cooperate with the ICC for fear of bringing sanctions. of the USA against themselves.
Earlier this month, more than 70 human rights organizations, religious groups and academic institutions called for the lifting of sanctions that they described as “an unprecedented attack on the court’s mandate to do justice and the rule of law worldwide, a abuse of the financial powers of the United States government and a betrayal of the United States’ legacy in establishing institutions of international justice ”.
Diplomats and experts predicted that the Biden government would eventually lift sanctions, but was looking for a way to do so without appearing to endorse the ICC’s investigations in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories.
“The United States’ relationship with the ICC is in a much more complicated situation than when the Obama administration took over,” said David Bosco, author of a book on the ICC called Rough Justice.
“The ICC now has an investigation underway in Afghanistan that includes the scrutiny of US officials and, of course, the judges have just made it clear that the prosecutor can investigate in Palestine.”
Bosco added: “In this environment, finding out how the US should approach the court is really complicated, and I think the government has decided that it needs to evaluate all approaches before removing sanctions.”