Vtv – Federal Judge Katherine Polk Failla, of Manhattan, United States, issued a preliminary injunction against the imposition of criminal or civil sanctions on Monday, under an executive order signed by outgoing President Donald Trump in June 2020, four human rights lawyers working with the ICC.
Trump had authorized travel and economic sanctions against ICC employees, based in The Hague, the Netherlands, and anyone supporting their work, including an investigation into whether US forces had committed crimes or not. from the war in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014. He reread a note from the Hispan TV website.
Failla said the national security rationale offered to seek to prevent and potentially punish lawyers’ speech is inadequate, so he ordered the White House not to move forward with the application of sanctions against the people. affected.
The Failla court order stems from an Oct. 1 lawsuit filed by the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative – a group of human rights lawyers – with law professors Diane Marie Amann, Gabor Rona, Milena Sterio and Margaret de Guzman, and it came a month after Washington imposed sanctions on ICC members, including Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda reports that she has received threats and sanctions
The lawsuit has been brought against Trump and other senior officials in his administration, including Secretary of State and Treasury Mike Pompeo and Steven Mnuchin, respectively; the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC, for its acronym in English), Andrea Gacki; and US Attorney General William Barr.
The ICC ruled on March 5, 2020 to open an investigation against the North American country after a preliminary examination, conducted by prosecutors in 2017, found reasonable grounds to believe that American soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan, and the ICC has the corresponding jurisdiction to conduct such investigations.
The investigations focus on crimes committed in the context of the armed conflict in Afghanistan, which began on May 1, 2003, when the Central Asian country became a member state of the Rome Statute.
The United States, which is not part of the ICC, is waging a relentless campaign against it, claiming it is pursuing politically motivated lawsuits against its citizens. The court assures us, however, that it is an institution based on an international system of rules. Meanwhile, several experts believe that the United States seeks impunity for its soldiers, perpetrators of all kinds of crimes.
