US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday slapping sanctions on the International Criminal Court for “baseless” investigations targeting America and its close ally Israel, the White House said.

Trump’s order said the court in The Hague had “abused its power” by issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who held talks with the US president on Tuesday.

The order also said the tribunal had engaged in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel,” referring to ICC probes into alleged war crimes by US service members in Afghanistan and Israeli troops in Gaza.

The US president ordered asset freezes and travel bans against ICC officials, employees and their family members, along with anyone deemed to have helped the court’s investigations.

The sanctions are a show of support after Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, during which Trump unveiled a plan for the US to “take over” Gaza and move Palestinians to other Middle Eastern countries.

Neither the United States nor Israel are members of the court.

There was no immediate reaction from the ICC.

The ICC issued arrest warrants on November 21 for Netanyahu, his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Deif — whom Israel says is dead.

The warrants, approved after an application by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in May, are for “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024.”

During his first term, Trump imposed financial sanctions and a visa ban on the ICC’s then-prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and other senior officials and staff in 2020.

Describing it as a “kangaroo court,” his then-administration made the move after Gambian-born Bensouda launched an investigation into allegations of war crimes against US soldiers in Afghanistan.

While his order at the time did not name Israel, Trump administration officials said they were also angered by Bensouda’s opening of a probe into the situation in the Palestinian territories in 2019.

President Joe Biden lifted the sanctions soon after taking office in 2021.

Prosecutor Khan later effectively dropped the United States from the Afghan investigation and focused on the Taliban instead.  

Biden strongly condemned the “outrageous” warrant against Netanyahu in November.

The US House passed a bill last month to sanction the ICC, but Senate Democrats blocked it last week, saying the bill could backfire on US allies and firms.

But Democrats have also expressed anger at the sanctions on Netanyahu.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President Donald Trump’s administration plans to keep fewer than 300 staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development out of the agency’s worldwide total of more than 10,000, four sources told Reuters on Thursday.

Washington’s primary humanitarian aid agency has been a target of a government reorganization program spearheaded by businessman Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, since the Republican president took office on January 20.

The four sources familiar with the plan said only 294 staff at the agency would be allowed to keep their jobs, including only 12 in the Africa bureau and eight in the Asia bureau.

“That’s outrageous,” said J. Brian Atwood, who served as head of USAID for more than six years, adding the mass termination of personnel would effectively kill an agency that has helped keep tens of millions of people around the world from dying.

“A lot of people will not survive,” said Atwood, now a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute.

The U.S. Department of State did not respond to a request for comment.

With Trump and Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, leveling false accusations that its staff were criminals, dozens of USAID staff have been put on leave, hundreds of internal contractors have been laid off and life-saving programs around the globe have been left in limbo.

The administration announced on Tuesday it was going to put on leave all directly hired USAID employees globally, and recall thousands of personnel working overseas.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said the administration was identifying and designating programs that would be exempted from the sweeping stop-work orders, which have threatened efforts around the globe to stop the spread of disease, prevent famine and otherwise alleviate poverty.

Implementing partners of USAID are facing financial trouble on the back of stop-work orders from the State Department.

MERGING USAID WITH STATE

The overhaul will upend the lives of thousands of staff and their families.

The administration’s goal is to merge USAID with the State Department led by Rubio, who Trump has made acting USAID administrator. However, it is not clear that he can merge the agencies unless Congress votes to do so, since USAID was created and is funded by laws that remain in place.

USAID employed more than 10,000 people around the world, two-thirds of them outside the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). It managed more than $40 billion in fiscal 2023, the most recent year for which there is complete data.

Sources familiar with events at the agency on Thursday said some workers had begun receiving termination notices.

The USAID website said that as of midnight on Friday, February 7, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.”

It said essential personnel expected to continue working would be informed by Thursday at 3 p.m. EST.

The agency provided aid to some 130 countries in 2023, many of them shattered by conflict and deeply impoverished. The top recipients were Ukraine, followed by Ethiopia, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan, according to the CRS report.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Post Content