Court freezes Trump’s ICC sanctions

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Feb. 6 executive order imposing sanctions on some who work for the International Criminal Court was blocked in a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen branded the order unconstitutional, infringing the First Amendment on the issue of free speech. “The executive order appears to restrict substantially more speech than necessary to further that end,” Torrensen was quoted as saying by Reuters.

“The executive order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States, Israel or another U.S. ally,” she said.

Trump’s order authorized broad economic and travel sanctions on individuals investigating U.S. citizens or U.S. allies, such as Israel, on behalf of the court in The Hague.

The federal court issued the preliminary injunction after concluding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their First Amendment violations claims.

The case has been brought before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine in April by two rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Maine, on behalf of Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan, according to the ACLU.

Radhakrishnan is a human rights lawyer and the president of the New York-based Global Justice Center.

Smith is the founder and CEO of the Fortify Rights NGO. In June, he wrote a column for New York Times explaining his decision to sue the Trump administration. The “sanctions against the ICC are an attack on global justice and the rule of law,” he wrote.

In 2020, when Trump issued similar sanctions compelling Americans to stop working with the ICC, the ACLU filed a similar lawsuit that was later dropped when then-President Joe Biden rescinded the sanctions.

“Preventing our clients and others like them from doing critical human rights work with the ICC is unconstitutional, and we’re heartened that the court saw that as well,” a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, Charlie Hogle, was cited as saying on the ACLU’s website.

“The First Amendment does not allow the government to impose sweeping limits on what Americans can say and who they can say it to,” he added.

The White House and the ICC did not immediately respond to requests for comment by Reuters.

Trump’s order in February declared a national emergency to respond to the ICC’s “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

It further imposed direct sanctions on British citizen and ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, who led investigations against Israel for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse and possible arrest,” the order states.

Neither the United States nor Israel is a member of the court, which is a stand-alone entity in The Hague and is not a part of the United Nations. Both Washington and Jerusalem therefore say that they are not subject to the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

In November, the court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, then the Israeli defense minister.

Since Trump’s order, however, Khan’s work has ground to a halt, the Associated Press reported in May.

Khan has lost access to his email, and his U.K. bank accounts have been frozen since Washington imposed the sanctions on Feb. 6, AP reported.

Citing current and former court officials, international attorneys and human rights advocates, the news wire reported that American staffers of the Hague-based court fear being arrested if they return to the United States.