Source: Fox News · 2026-08-23 · Original article ↗

Trump administration sanctions sitting president of the International Criminal Court for 'abuses of power'

Rubio just froze the ICC president's US accounts. The court that papered Netanyahu wants a lecture. It got a lock.

Summary

  • Fox News reports the Trump administration sanctioned ICC President Tomoko Akane of Japan and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal, freezing US-jurisdiction assets and cutting them off from American finance.
  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the court 'corrupt and fatally politicized' and said both officials engaged in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose governments never consented to ICC jurisdiction.
  • The US and Israel are not Rome Statute parties. The ICC still pursued alleged US conduct in Afghanistan and issued September 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
  • An executive order from February 2025 built the sanctions frame. Rubio said the campaign to dismantle the ICC threat to sovereignty will be sweeping and that more countries should end funding and participation. The ICC called the move a 'flagrant attack' on its independence.

Commentary

A soldier still writes a letter home from a plywood desk and assumes his own Congress is the court that can try him. He did not enlist into a dock in The Hague that his country never joined.

That is the gap. The ICC papered Netanyahu while Hamas still held the hostages in the story. It reached for US names over Afghanistan. Rubio froze the president's accounts. Sovereignty is not a vibe. It is who can put a hand on a citizen.

Ask every allied capital that still writes the court a check: if the US and Israel never signed, who elected The Hague as their superior officer?

Comments

Do ICC sanctions defend sovereignty, or 'attack the legal order'?
u/border_dad · 5h

A court you never joined does not get my soldier. Freeze the accounts.

u/midwest_vet · 4h

I deployed under a chain of command that ends in Washington. The Hague is not in it.

u/rule_first · 4h

No consent, no jurisdiction. Warrants on Netanyahu are politics in a robe.

u/tokyo_ally · 3h

Japan's name on that presidency is a problem for Tokyo too. Allies do not outsource a prime minister.

u/docket_rat · 3h

Watch the NGOs scream 'rule of law.' They mean a docket the voters never approved.

u/night_shift · 2h

I do not get tried by a club I never paid. Neither does a rifleman.

u/texas_mom · 90m

If they can paper an Israeli PM, they can paper the next American kid. Cut the funding.

u/gulf_watch · 55m

Hamas does not sit in that dock. Netanyahu did. That is the tell.

u/press_clip · 30m

Fox printed Akane, Seye, February 2025, and the 2024 warrants. Argue those nouns.

u/soc_lead · 15m

Keep the freeze. End the dues. Israel's right to finish the war is not a Hague permission slip.

Paraphrased comments. Not attributed.

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