Trump administration sanctions UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Rubio made the announcement on X.
"Albanese's campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense," he wrote.
"The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies."
Albanese had previously been labelled an "antisemite" by the Trump administration. Her latest report named several US companies for aiding Israel's "economy of genocide".
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He said: 'What I did say was that Karim Khan should trust Israel's civil society to fight for accountability in the local courts.' The meeting took place less than two weeks before the Wall Street Journal published allegations that Khan was accused of sexual assault. Until then reported allegations against Khan had been of harassment – including Khan 'sexually touching' the complainant, putting his hand in the complainant's pocket and demanding to be let into her hotel room in the middle of the night. Khan has denied all allegations. There is no suggestion of any connection between the Kaufman-Khan meeting and the publication of the Wall Street Journal allegations. Sanctions and threats The revelations about the warning delivered to Khan by Kaufman come with the prosecutor and the court facing unprecedented pressure from the US over the ICC's investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. Khan was sanctioned by the US in February, and four ICC judges were sanctioned in June over their role in issuing the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. In comments to Israel's Kan public broadcaster last month, Kaufman described the sanctioning of the judges as a 'further warning shot across the bows' of the ICC which he said was 'meant to be designed to encourage the dropping of the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Gallant'. Numerous reports in the US and British media have claimed that Khan sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on 20 May 2024 to win support in the context of sexual misconduct allegations against him. The Wall Street Journal claimed in an editorial on 16 May this year that Khan had used the arrest warrants to 'distract from his own behaviour'. It described the ICC's case against Netanyahu as 'tainted'. Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe Read More » But in fact, as previously reported by MEE, the prosecutor's decision to apply for warrants was made six weeks before allegations were made against him in late April. MEE has been told by multiple sources that on 16 March 2024, Khan's extensive team of lawyers and researchers had decided they would be in a position to apply for warrants by the end of April. On 25 March, Khan informed the US administration of his decision and forewarned them the warrants would be applied for by the end of April. Over the following two months, pressure on Khan mounted. On 23 April David Cameron, then the British foreign secretary, threatened in a phone call with Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. Last month MEE revealed details of the call, in which Cameron told Khan applying for the warrants would be like 'dropping a hydrogen bomb'. The British Foreign Office and Khan both declined to comment in response to the report, while Cameron did not respond to multiple requests by MEE for comment. Khan faced more pressure from other sources. In a virtual meeting with ICC officials in May, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened sanctions against them if Khan applied for the warrants, according to British barrister Andrew Cayley, who oversaw the ICC's Palestine investigation. These threats would not dissuade Khan from applying for the warrants. It was on 29 April 2024, over a month after the decision to apply for warrants was made, that one of Khan's staff made harassment allegations against him. The allegations were referred to the court's Internal Oversight Mechanism (IOM), its investigative body, on 3 May. But an investigation was closed days later after the woman said she did not want to cooperate with it. This means that when Khan announced he was applying for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on 20 May, there was no investigation against him. Months later, in October, as speculation began to increase that ICC judges would soon issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, an anonymous account on social media platform X began circulating details of the sexual misconduct allegations against Khan. UN urged to take legal action at ICJ to uphold Francesca Albanese's immunity Read More » According to the Wall Street Journal, an anonymous source also sent information about the allegations to journalists in an email that contained the phone numbers of the complainant and an advisor to Khan, Thomas Lynch, next to the Hebrew word for telephones. The IOM then opened another investigation, which was closed in early November. Two investigations into the allegations had been opened and closed when the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) opened its own external investigation, which is ongoing. Since being subjected to sanctions by the US in February, Khan has had his American visa revoked and his wife and children have been banned from travelling to the country. His bank accounts have also been frozen in the UK. Khan declined to comment on the matters raised in this article. He has repeatedly denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The ICC also finds itself in a precarious position. In a further threat to the court last week, the US State Department's legal advisor Reed Rubinstein warned that 'all options remain on the table' unless all arrest warrants and the investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes are dropped. The US also last week imposed sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, who it said had 'directly engaged' with the ICC. If the US sanctions the court as an institution, as some experts believe it might, it would prevent many banks and software companies from dealing with it – potentially crippling the ICC's ability to function.
