Addressing UN, Trump calls on ‘all nations’ who are members of ICC to quit the court

UNITED NATIONS — US President Donald Trump calls on all nations that are members of the International Criminal Court to withdraw from the panel.

“We will never allow US service members or anyone else to be investigated or given show trials by an anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction over us,” Trump says in his remarks at the UN General Assembly, calling the ICC “an evil group of people.”

“I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately,” he says.

Trump makes no mention of Israel, whose leaders are facing war crimes charges by the ICC.

Reuters reported yesterday that the Trump administration has prepared sanctions against the entire ICC and plans to announce them soon, in a move that would step up its attack on the global tribunal that prosecutes war crimes and genocide worldwide.

US officials want the court to drop its arrest warrants against Israeli leaders as well as a past probe into American troops in Afghanistan. Previous US sanctions have targeted individual court officials rather than the entire ICC.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July announced a campaign to isolate the court, calling on other countries to withdraw from the tribunal. And last month, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC’s president and one of its top prosecutors. The sanctions freeze any assets that they have in US jurisdictions or that come into contact with the US financial system.