The White House listed Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as the first person to be designated for sanctions on Monday under an executive order targeting the court for investigating alleged Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza.
Khan, a British national, was previously reported to be a target of the sanctions; the White House officially added his name in an annex to the executive order on Monday.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed the order authorizing sanctions on the ICC on Feb. 6 over what the order describes as the “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” that the court poses.
Khan announced that he was seeking warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister, for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Gaza. The court issued the arrest warrants in November.
The United States and Israel argue that the court does not have jurisdiction over them because they are not party to the Rome Statute that created the court in 2002.
Trump previously sanctioned a pair of ICC officials in 2020 over their investigation of U.S. conduct in Afghanistan. Former President Joe Biden lifted those sanctions in 2021.
Sanctioned individuals typically have their assets frozen, even if they are held in foreign banks, and they and their families are barred from entering the United States.
The court’s president, Judge Tomoko Akane, denounced the sanctions order against Khan on Friday.
“The announced executive order is only the latest in a series of unprecedented and escalatory attacks aiming to undermine the court’s ability to administer justice in all situations,” Akane wrote. “We firmly reject any attempt to influence the independence and the impartiality of the court or to politicize our judicial function.”