International Criminal Court officials sanctioned by US

BBC:

The US has imposed sanctions on senior officials in the International Criminal Court (ICC), including chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

Last November I visited an English language bookstore in Amsterdam several times and picked up a number of volumes on war crimes, including a collection of essays edited by a team which included my Vietnam & America professor Marilyn Young. Marilyn contributed a piece on the US massacre of civilians at No Gun Ri. At the bookstore I found several books on mass rape and murder in the Balkans as well. I was interested in this reading partly as a result of visiting Dutch and Belgian deportation camps and observing the differences in the ways with which the two societies presented the narratives of their complicity with Nazi crimes during WW II.

I visited Den Haag several times in October and November. It was thrilling to see the ICC buildings, just to stand and look at the sign, to walk up the steps and stand in the courtyard. A short distance from the ICC is Scheveningen Prison, where members of the Dutch resistance were held.

This BBC article caught my eye today not because of new information presented, but rather because this is only another of a number of articles with variations of this headline. The US „sanctions“ — imposes quasi-legal (or at least what the US presents as legal) — penalties on the officers of an international judicial body. This comes just weeks after on Iran sanctions the US faced UN Security Council opposition from all members but the Dominican Republic. The US imposed sanctions on officials of the International Criminal Court. This caught my eye.

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