THE International Criminal Court (ICC) today condemned the US for imposing new sanctions on its president and top staff.

Decrying a “flagrant attack” on the court’s independence, it said that “when judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched further attacks on the court yesterday, calling it “a corrupt and fatally politicised supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

He pledged “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the [ICC] to US sovereignty” last month.

The court has never prosecuted a US citizen, but Washington has reacted angrily to it issuing arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant on suspicion of war crimes. Neither the US nor Israel recognises the court.

The Donald Trump administration has now slapped sanctions on nine of the ICC’s 18 judges, its former chief prosecutor and another prosecution office employee.

Because of the US’s control of the international banking system and major global tech and comms platforms, its sanctions can cut off access to banking and other basic services.

Former ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had his bank accounts frozen and his email cut off after being sanctioned by the US, though he is a British citizen and Britain was not party to the sanctions.

Similar “de-banking,” forcing total reliance on cash, has hit UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, sanctioned for her documentation of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians. Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost says she not only lost access to her credit cards when sanctioned but her Alexa virtual assistant stopped talking to her.

The US has also publicly announced a campaign to get the 125 member states that are party to the court to withdraw, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth saying yesterday that all members of the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition, a new Trump-aligned alliance of 17 countries across Central and South America designed to reassert US dominance in the western hemisphere, ought to quit it.