War Crimes Prosecutor Reed Brody
HAVANA TIMES – The Trump administration on August 9th placed sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court that target the institution as a whole. This comes on top of earlier sanctions against individual ICC judges and personnel. The administration has been escalating attacks on the ICC since the court issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It announced the sanctions just hours after former ICC Judge Navi Pillay — the South African jurist who led the United Nations commission of inquiry that concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza — was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“This is really an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the United States and its ally Israel are committing in plain sight,” says war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, a member of the International Commission of Jurists. The sanctions, which prevent U.S.-based banks and companies from transacting with the ICC, constitute an “existential attack” on the court, he says.
Transcript
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The Trump administration has placed sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court. The sanctions target the institution as a whole. This comes on top of earlier sanctions targeting individual ICC judges and personnel.
The Trump administration announced the sanctions on Friday, just hours after former ICC Judge Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Pillay criticized President Trump’s new sanctions.
NAVI PILLAY: So, I think it’s very unfortunate. However, the plans of targeting international criminal justice through the ICC was brewing all the time. We all heard these threats against the court. So, the timing of how they announced the threat and made it official is curious. … It can’t be coincidental when they’re so angry with the court. And that’s why the first thing I did when I returned from Nuremberg to The Hague is to go to the staff of the ICC to show solidarity for their work in promoting international criminal justice and to protect, to protect those who have already been sanctioned.
AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration has been escalating its attacks on the International Criminal Court ever since the ICC issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the new sanctions on the ICC on Friday.
SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: And President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans. And that’s why today the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us, because our message is clear: The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC. Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all. Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC. And we expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in this rogue court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC piece by piece until Americans are threatened no longer.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made these comments just after it was announced who won the Nobel Peace Prize, Navi Pillay — not President Trump, who has been seeking it actively and publicly for years.
For more, we’re joined here in New York by Reed Brody, war crimes prosecutor, member of the International Commission of Jurists.
Reed, we spoke on Friday. You talked all about Navi Pillay and the significance of who she is and what it means for her to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, Trump said right afterwards nobody knows who she is. But this announcement right after that announcement, talk about the significance. We’ve seen individual members of the ICC have been sanctioned, but the whole court? Could the U.S. take it down?
REED BRODY: Well, you know, the juxtaposition is amazing. I mean, the Nobel Committee, when they awarded the prize to Navi Pillay, they said international law is under unprecedented attack. And a couple of hours later, the Trump administration proved them right with these sweeping sanctions on the ICC.
As you say, up until now, the court has — the Trump administration has sanctioned the prosecutors, individual judges, but this is an attack on the entire court. And it basically prevents American or U.S.-based banks, insurance companies, any company from transacting with the court. And, you know, these are existential — this is an existential attack on the court. In addition, non-American companies tend to overcomply. I mean, we saw AXA, the main Dutch insurer of the court and court personnel, withdrawing, even though they were not subject to sanctions. And so, really, I mean, the 125 countries that are members of this court are now going, you know, to have to step up.
You know, Marco Rubio talks about American sovereignty against a runaway court. I mean, this is really an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the United States and its ally Israel are committing in plain sight. I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant have been indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity. The United States is involved in an illegal attack on Iran that constitutes probably the crime of aggression; bombing water plants and girls’ schools in Iran, that could be war crimes; blowing up boats in the Caribbean without due process and trial. As we speak, Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, is facing trial in The Hague for the alleged extrajudicial execution of suspected drug dealers. Sending migrants to a prison in El Salvador, a notorious prison, where they were, in fact, tortured, can create criminal liability.
And so, you know, not unsurprisingly, the Trump administration is doing abroad what it does at home: you know, trample on human rights, trample on the rule of law, and then attack the very institutions — the courts, the journalists, the NGOs — that try to hold it to account.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, it’s interesting, Reed, because, as you pointed out, the U.S. has never been a member of the International Criminal Court. The U.S. provides no funding for the International Criminal Court. And as you’ve also said, I mean, there are a number of very powerful countries that are not members of the ICC, which includes also three of the five permanent members of the Security Council. And indeed, also, you know, you mentioned Iran. If you could explain, because you were involved in the establishment of this court, helping to lobby governments to accede to the treaty, you know, what was the resistance that you faced then? Indeed, Iran is not a member of the International Criminal Court. And then, how the structure works, that you have to be a party to the treaty in order to be able to claim jurisdiction? So, for example, in the case, Israel is not a member of the ICC, but Palestine is.
REED BRODY: Right. I think that’s the key point here. I mean, Marco Rubio talks about American sovereignty. Well, yeah, if an American — I mean, the ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes committed in America by Americans. It doesn’t have jurisdiction over ICE violence, over, you know, deaths in custody. But if the United States commits crimes on the territory of a country that has ratified or given its jurisdiction to the ICC, there’s no sovereignty question. I mean, I’m an American citizen. If I go to Paris and start shooting people, the French courts can prosecute me. That’s their sovereign right. And they can also give that right to the International Criminal Court. So, the U.S. has no sovereign right to commit war crimes on the territory of countries that have given its jurisdiction.
The same way, I mean, Vladimir Putin, let’s remember — Russia hasn’t signed up to the court, but Vladimir Putin has a warrant outstanding for alleged crimes committed in Ukraine. And in fact, when that happened, the U.S. applauded, and Lindsey Graham marshaled a 100-to-0 vote in the Senate applauding the indictment of Vladimir Putin, who is not a member of the International Criminal Court.
The same thing with Israel. Israel is not a member, but Palestine is. And you have no right — I mean, you have a sovereign right within your own country. You don’t have a sovereign right to go and commit war crimes on other people’s territory.
And that was, in fact, the objection back in 1998, when we were in Rome, to the International Criminal Court. That is why the Clinton administration was one of only seven countries to vote against the ICC statute, because they wanted an ironclad, you know, guarantee that no American — they usually put it in terms of soldiers, but really what they mean is officials — you know, that no American soldier or official could ever be held accounted to the ICC.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But didn’t Clinton sign the Rome Statute in 2000 at the end of the year?
REED BRODY: So, the U.S. voted against it. There was a lot of, you know, back and forth. As his term was ending, or I think it was on — it was the last day that he could actually sign the treaty — he did sign the treaty. He said he wasn’t sending it to the Senate for ratification, but he was signing the treaty as a measure of good faith.
Then, of course, Bush came along, and under John Bolton, they unsigned the treaty, and they pushed through a legislation, the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, colloquially known as the Hague Invasion Act, that actually — and is still in force — that actually authorizes the United States to take any means necessary to extract, to prevent an American or an ally from being tried before the ICC.
AMY GOODMAN: Reed, before we end, I want to ask you about a related story. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from penalizing two groups from working with the ICC. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by your group, DAWN, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide. Reed, you serve as a board member of DAWN. Explain the significance, as we begin to wrap up.
REED BRODY: So, you know, the ICC’s — the Palestinian organizations, because the sanctions that were in effect before last week included sanctions against the U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the Occupied Territories and four Palestinian human rights organizations.
Now, my organization, DAWN, has been very active in cooperating with the ICC. We actually presented a petition to the court detailing the evidence showing the complicity of U.S. officials of the Biden administration with the court. We also work very closely with the sanctioned Palestinian organizations, including Raji Sourani’s organization, who’s been on your show many times. So, we brought — and we asked the Treasury Department four times or three times, “Is this OK? Are we in” — and the Treasury Department never got back to us. And so we had to stop working with the court, stop working with the sanctioned Palestinian organizations.
And so, we brought this lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. And, you know, this week, we got this ruling from a district judge enjoining the administration from applying the sanctions, or from the secondary sanctions to DAWN and to TAAG. There are actually seven lawsuits going up against these sanctions, lawsuits brought by law professors, lawsuits brought by judges of the court themselves, a lawsuit brought by CCR and Human Rights Watch, all of which have so far been — at least for those brought by American citizens, have been successful.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, I just want to mention very quickly, before we conclude, Reed, that, in fact, earlier this year, when Marco Rubio, secretary of state, talked about the court, Trump actually said explicitly, “He’s not doing this to defend me, but he is doing it to defend Bibi.” He said this explicitly in a press conference. But I wanted to ask — we have 30 seconds. You said people who are — countries that are signatories to the court, members of the court, they have to step up in order to save the court from the effects of these sanctions. What do you think the Europeans will do?
REED BRODY: Well, they need to — they have a blocking statute, basically, that says to Dutch companies, to European companies, “You cannot comply with these sanctions.” Now, it’s not a silver bullet, because people are as afraid of, you know, U.S. sanctions as they are of European pushback.
But I do want to say that, you know, the Gallant and Netanyahu arrests were a watershed in international justice.
AMY GOODMAN: Arrest warrants.
REED BRODY: The arrest warrants were a watershed in international justice. I mean, up until then, going back to Nuremberg, the instruments of international justice had only been used against defeated enemies, like in Tokyo and Nuremberg, impotent Africans, enemies of the West, like Vladimir Putin and Slobodan Milošević. And we were — and people in the Global South and people like me were arguing that these are double standards. And when the court, finally, in the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants, you know, issued — showed that it could be evenhanded, that is when the United States moved to strangle this court.
AMY GOODMAN: Reed Brody, war crimes prosecutor, member of the International Commission of Jurists.