Sanctioning Judges of the International Criminal Court: A Manifestation of the Disintegration of the Institutional Order of Human Rights

Zahra Yazdanmehr

Bachelor’s Student in Law, Shiraz University

Introduction

The international legal order is currently experiencing one of the deepest normative and institutional crises of the post–World War II era. This crisis, stemming from the direct confrontation of major powers with the International Criminal Court, has moved beyond conventional diplomatic tensions and has targeted the core essence of the rule of law and the independence of supranational judicial institutions.

While, in the past, the opposition of non–States Parties to the Rome Statute was primarily manifested through institutional non-cooperation, political positioning, and challenges to the Court’s jurisdiction, recent developments indicate a fundamental paradigmatic shift toward transnational criminalization and the imposition of targeted personal and financial sanctions against the judges and prosecutors of the Court.

These confrontational policies—specifically adopted by two global powers, namely the United States of America and the Russian Federation—have led to a phenomenon that international legal doctrine describes as the gradual erosion and disintegration of the independence of the global criminal justice system.

An examination of the various dimensions of these approaches demonstrates how instruments of national sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction are being employed in order to neutralize the functioning and intimidate senior supranational judicial officials.

The Transnational Sanctions Regime of the United States

The approach of the United States toward the International Criminal Court has consistently been grounded in the preservation of national sovereignty and legal exceptionalism. However, the transition from conventional legislative opposition—such as the adoption of the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act in 2002—to the direct targeting of the financial resources and personal assets of judges indicates an unprecedented instrumentalization of the global financial system (Ambos, 2025).

This institutional confrontation entered a new phase during the first presidency of Donald Trump, with the issuance of Executive Order No. 13928 in June 2020 (Executive Office of the President, 2020). This order, which declared a national emergency, was issued in response to the Court’s investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and resulted in the freezing of the assets of Fatou Bensouda, then Prosecutor of the Court, and Phakiso Mochochoko, a senior official of the Office of the Prosecutor; an action that had already been preceded in 2019 by the revocation of the Prosecutor’s visa to enter the United States (Human Rights Watch, 2020).

Although these sanctions were revoked in April 2021 by the Biden administration, with the return of Trump to power in his second presidential term, this confrontational policy was reactivated with greater intensity. On 6 February 2025, the President of the United States signed Executive Order No. 14203 titled “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” establishing a broad sanctions regime against ICC officials and individuals cooperating in cases involving U.S. nationals or allies not party to the Rome Statute, particularly Israel (Young, 2026).

The primary objective of this order was to impose punitive measures in response to the issuance of arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, and Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defense of Israel. The scope of the resulting coercive measures was such that the International Criminal Court, in an unprecedented step in January 2025—prior to the installation of the new U.S. administration—advanced the payment of three months of staff salaries in order to prevent a potential financial crisis resulting from the anticipated freezing of bank accounts (NOS, 2025).

Executive Order 14203 defined protected persons normatively, classifying any attempt to investigate, arrest, or prosecute U.S. nationals and their allies without the consent of their state of nationality as an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security (The White House, 2025).

Following instructions from Marco Rubio, then Secretary of State, the scope of the sanctions regime was rapidly expanded. Accordingly, in June 2025 four ICC judges were added to the sanctions list; in July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, was sanctioned due to her academic and legal cooperation with the Court (U.S. Department of State, 2025). In August 2025, two deputy prosecutors and two additional judges were added; in September 2025, three major Palestinian human rights NGOs—Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights—were sanctioned for allegedly providing documentation to the Court (Human Rights Watch, 2025); and in December 2025, two judges of the Appeals Chamber, Gocha Lordkipanidze of Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia, were sanctioned for affirming the Court’s jurisdiction in the Palestine situation (U.S. Department of State, 2025).

Judicial responses within the United States have also been legally significant. Similar to the first Trump administration period—during which several international law professors successfully obtained interim relief against Executive Order 13928—in the second term, in February 2026, the spouse and child of Francesca Albanese filed a complaint before the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. The court held that the sanctions deprived Albanese’s daughter of her right as a U.S. citizen to return to the country and violated her spouse’s freedom of expression, issuing a preliminary injunction based on the likelihood of success in demonstrating a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (LC v. Trump, 2026).

Cross-border Criminalization by the Russian Federation

On the other side, the Russian Federation has pursued its institutional confrontation with the International Criminal Court through direct criminalization and the instrumentalization of domestic criminal law against international judges.

The starting point of this confrontation dates back to March 2023, when the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II issued arrest warrants against Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights, on allegations of the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied territories of Ukraine.

The Pre-Trial Chamber, relying on relevant provisions of the Rome Statute and establishing the foundations of individual criminal responsibility and command responsibility with respect to the head of state, issued these warrants and, considering the continuing nature of the alleged crimes, exceptionally made them public by lifting confidentiality restrictions (Zona Media, 2025).

In immediate response, the Russian government undertook retaliatory judicial measures. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation initiated criminal proceedings and placed Karim A.A. Khan, Prosecutor of the Court, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, an Italian judge, and Tomoko Akane, a Japanese judge, on a list of individuals subject to transnational criminal prosecution (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 2023).

This confrontational trajectory reached its peak in November 2025 with the completion of investigative procedures by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. This process ultimately culminated on 12 December 2025 in the issuance of unprecedented in absentia criminal judgments by the Moscow City Court.

During these in absentia proceedings, Prosecutor Karim Khan was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment in penal colonies, while eight other ICC officials—including Judge Tomoko Akane—received prison sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years.

The Moscow Court classified the aforementioned individuals under criminal provisions of Russian law, including knowingly prosecuting an innocent person, unlawful detention, and conspiracy to attack a foreign state representative with the intent of inciting war or disrupting international relations.

These coercive measures were strongly condemned in February 2026 by UN Special Rapporteurs on human rights. The experts characterized the Russian judicial practice as a reprehensible attempt to criminalize the independent functioning of the judiciary and as a manifest violation of international law (OHCHR, 2026).

Human Rights Violations and State Responsibility

The confrontational actions of powerful states such as the United States of America and the Russian Federation against the International Criminal Court go beyond ordinary political disputes and constitute an overt violation of supranational judicial independence, the global legal order, the foundational principles of international law, and the system of international criminal accountability.

Judicial independence is not merely a domestic democratic norm but has been consolidated as a fundamental principle of customary international law (Gavrielidis, 2026). According to established international standards, judges and officials of criminal justice systems must be able to perform their duties free from any intimidation, obstruction, undue interference, or financial and administrative threats (OHCHR, 2025).

In this context, there exists a fundamental distinction between conventional structural opposition—such as non-accession to a treaty—and retaliatory individual measures, since targeting the financial and legal security of judges for their judicial decisions constitutes a direct assault on judicial conscience and the integrity of adjudication.

Under the International Law Commission’s Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, the existence of international responsibility depends on two constitutive elements: attribution of conduct to the state and breach of an international obligation (International Law Commission, 2001).

In the case of the United States, the issuance and signing of executive orders by the President is clearly attributable to the state. The element of breach is established through inconsistency with customary obligations requiring respect for the independence of international judicial bodies, since deliberately targeting the financial interests of a judge in order to influence judicial decision-making constitutes a clear act of unlawful interference in the rule of international law (Crawford, 2002).

Furthermore, in its landmark judgment in the Barcelona Traction case, the International Court of Justice distinguished between bilateral obligations and obligations owed erga omnes to the international community as a whole, identifying the prevention of genocide, prohibition of aggression, and protection of fundamental human rights as obligations of an erga omnes character (International Court of Justice, 1970).

Since the very purpose of the International Criminal Court is to adjudicate such serious crimes and safeguard erga omnes obligations, protecting the independence of its judges is directly linked to the interests of the entire international community. Consequently, sanctions or prosecutions targeting ICC judges constitute a breach of obligations owed to the international community as a whole.

Finally, from the perspective of international criminal law, both the financial sanctions imposed by the United States and the criminal prosecutions initiated by the Russian Federation align with the criminal conduct defined in Article 70 of the Rome Statute. This provision, dedicated to offences against the administration of justice, criminalizes any form of pressure, threat, or corrupt influence exerted on Court officials with the purpose of obstructing or improperly influencing their duties (International Criminal Court, 1998).

Systemic Consequences, the Phenomenon of Civil Death, and European Defensive Shields

Due to the imposition of strict civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms in U.S. domestic legislation against individuals cooperating with sanctioned entities, non-U.S. financial and service institutions across the world become subject to the phenomenon of over-compliance.

As a result of this precautionary approach, European and international banks, technology service platforms, and credit card providers immediately proceed to freeze the personal accounts of sanctioned judges. In this context, Judge Prost, in an interview in late 2025, described how all of her personal assets suddenly became inaccessible and how she lost the ability to conduct even routine financial transactions—an occurrence that undermines the independence of judges and endangers their psychological and professional security (O’Leary, 2025).

The European Union, as one of the key supporters of the International Criminal Court, possesses various legal mechanisms to neutralize the extraterritorial effects of such sanctions; however, the operational activation of these mechanisms has consistently been accompanied by complex political considerations.

Specifically, the EU Blocking Statute prohibits individuals and companies within the European Union from complying with extraterritorial sanctions imposed by the United States (Council of the European Union, 1996).

Given that support for the International Criminal Court constitutes a foundational principle of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, the sanctioning of European judges of the Court is regarded as a direct interference in the Union’s normative sovereignty.

In addition to external protective tools, the International Criminal Court itself has been compelled to reduce its structural vulnerabilities by decreasing its technological dependence on software and platforms owned by the United States and transitioning toward indigenous and independent systemic infrastructures.

This defensive strategy is pursued with the aim of preventing sudden administrative disruption and operational breakdowns in the event of broad institutional sanctions.

Conclusion

The convergence of the United States’ transnational sanctioning measures and the Russian Federation’s in absentia criminal judgments has placed the rule of international law at a critical and decisive juncture.

The material and structural weakening of the International Criminal Court significantly increases the risk of a return to legal anarchy and the replacement of the rule of law with the primacy of force.

When judges of an international tribunal face personal sanctions, asset freezes, and long-term imprisonment merely for their legal interpretations and enforcement of justice, judicial security and independence in the international sphere are severely undermined.

To overcome this normative crisis and prevent the collapse of the global criminal justice system, coordinated and preemptive strategies by States Parties to the Rome Statute are required across four key domains: national financial and protective guarantees, strict enforcement of blocking statutes, activation of the Rome Statute’s criminal accountability mechanisms, and diversification of critical technological infrastructures.

International justice must not become a selective instrument applied only against structurally weaker states. The protection of the position, security, and independence of ICC judges is a universal obligation shared by all states that, in continuity with the historical legacy of the Nuremberg Tribunal, affirm that the gravest international crimes must not go unpunished.

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