EU ‘Standing by’ ICC after US Sanctions on Prosecutor

The European Union will back the International Criminal Court against efforts to impair it, a spokesman for the bloc announced Thursday after Washington slapped sanctions on The Hague-based tribunal’s top prosecutor.

“We are standing by the ICC and we are not happy to see steps which are going against the activities of the ICC,” EU foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano told reporters in Brussels.

The ICC on Wednesday announced the US government’s moves were an attack on international justice and the rule of law.

The court was responding after the US government moved to blacklist ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda because she had launched an investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The sanctions are “unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the Court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally,” the world’s permanent war crimes court said in a statement.