Washington imposes sanctions on ICC prosecutor in defense of Israel

The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, on Thursday.

The US Treasury Department has designated Karim Ahmad Khan on the Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.

This came days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on February 7 to punish the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Trump claimed in a statement at the time that the ICC “baselessly and unlawfully targets the United States and its close allies like Israel.”

The US Treasury said in a statement on its website on Thursday evening that Karim Ahmad Khan was included on the sanctions list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the ministry.

Karim Khan is a prominent British lawyer, born in 1970. He held the position of British Crown Counsel, and is the third public prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and the first to be elected by secret ballot.

He also served as Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in 2007, and worked as a legal advisor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda during the investigation of war crimes, and led investigations into crimes committed in Ukraine, Syria and South Sudan.

On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

With American support, between October 7, 2023 and January 19, 2025, Israel committed genocide in Gaza, leaving about 160,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 14,000 missing.

(Anatolia)