THE president of the International Criminal Court lashed out yesterday at the United States and Russia for interfering with its investigations, calling threats and attacks on the court “appalling.”

“The court is being threatened with draconian economic sanctions by another permanent member of the security council as if it was a terrorist organisation,” Judge Tomoko Akane, in her address to the institution’s annual meeting, which opened yesterday in The Hague in the Netherlands.

Judge Akane was referring to remarks made by US Senator Lindsey Graham, whose Republican party will control both branches of Congress in January, and who called the court a “dangerous joke” and urged Congress to sanction its prosecutor.