Independence of the International Criminal Court under Friendly Fire?
In December 2025, I wrote a first post on US sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) in retaliation for the issuance of arrest warrants in the Afghanistan and Palestine situations. In that post, I regretted the limited support that States Parties appeared to be offering the Court - at least based on publicly available sources - to protect its independence. The independence of the sanctioned j udges, the Prosecutor, and the Deputy Prosecutors seemed to constitute the sole bulwark safeguarding the institution’s independence. I explored possible avenues for States Parties to genuinely support and assist the Court; nothing public was done… until, according to media reports (such as here , here or there ) , April Fool’s Day 2026. A note of caution is warranted. Pursuant to Rule 26 ter of the ICC Rules of Procedure and Evidence (“RPE”), the entire investigation mentioned below is confidential. The information discussed in this post derives from public media ...