U.S. Sanctions ICC President

The story so far

As of August 18, 2026

The United States has sanctioned International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, freezing any assets that touch the U.S. financial system, barring U.S. entities from providing them services, and restricting their entry to the United States. This is the first time a sitting ICC president has been designated. With these additions, U.S. measures now cover nine of the court’s 18 judges, both deputy prosecutors, the former prosecutor, and one staff member.

What began as a dispute over particular investigations has become an effort to disable the institution itself. Since 2025, Executive Order 14203 has been used not only to target ICC leaders but to criminalize U.S. persons’ provision of “any services” to designees, drawing banks, tech firms, and vendors into cutting them off. ICC judges and U.S. rights groups have sued to challenge those sanctions in federal court. Inside the court, the prosecutor’s office is managing leadership turnover after Karim Khan was removed from office in July, even as both deputies now running it remain under U.S. sanctions.

The core conflict is over whether a nonmember can use sanctions and diplomacy to block a treaty court from pursuing cases that involve its nationals for conduct on the territory of ICC member states. Washington is pressing governments to leave the court and halt funding; Chad and Venezuela have announced withdrawals. The Netherlands, the European Union, and Japan have publicly backed the ICC and criticized the new U.S. designations, signaling a split among U.S. partners over how far to go against the court.

The chain of events runs through the ICC prosecutor’s May 2024 applications for arrest warrants tied to the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s operations in Gaza, layered atop older files involving Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather than contest those filings in court, the U.S. response has targeted the court’s people and its infrastructure. Sanctioning the presidency marks the point at which the campaign moved from arguing jurisdiction to trying to strip the court of the capacity to act.